


Out Here Hope Remains

by audreycritter



Series: Cor Et Cerebrum [3]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Superman/Batman (Comics)
Genre: Character Study, Family Drama, Gen, Kent farm, everybody needs a break, jason todd is healing, martha kent is my hero, third in a series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-03
Updated: 2016-12-27
Packaged: 2018-08-28 21:43:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 26,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8464060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/audreycritter/pseuds/audreycritter
Summary: This story picks up a week after Zsasz kills Jason Todd, again. It overlaps with Developmental Milestones and fills in some gaps, as Jason recovers at the Kent Farm. A full year after Bruce Wayne's brain surgery, the family is just trying to catch a break and maybe find a way to heal a little bit. Because what point is there in saving Gotham if you don't have a family to save it for?





	1. In Which We Leave the Manor

**Author's Note:**

> If you haven't read parts one and two of this trilogy, I really recommend you go back and at least skim them. The characters have been under my pen, so to speak, for over a year of timeline now and I've let them gradually and quietly mature-- so, if you skip the first parts, the story might make sense but the characters might seem slightly off. I write mostly Pre-New 52 but loosely mix canon. The title is from a Caedmon's Call song, "40 Acres", and the characters belong to DC Comics with the exception of Kiran Devabhaktuni, who is mine.

** Out Here Hope Remains **

* * *

Epitaph On My Days in Hospital

 

_ By Vera Mary Brittain _

 

I found in you a holy place apart, 

Sublime endurance, God in man revealed, 

Where mending broken bodies slowly healed 

My broken heart

 

* * *

 

Damian Wayne stands by the car in the November cold, not stiff but holding his body taut and ready to spring. He has no reason to need to, but old habits die hard. Even when you’re twelve.

It has been a week since Jason Todd died for a second time. Stephanie and Grayson are reluctant to refer to it as dying, but the technicality is important to Damian and also, he suspects, Father.

He watches Jason Todd walk down the front steps of the Manor and Todd _is_ stiff. He’s moving slowly, waving Father away from him and grumbling loudly.

“Deck the halls, B,” he mutters when they’re closer. “I’m fine. I’m fricking fine to drive. Even Dev said so.”

The swear jar has been in effect for a whole week and Jason has only contributed two dollars. It would have been five, but Pennyworth broke the rules on the older boy’s behalf and claimed that words uttered while Dr. Devabhaktuni was cleaning a mild infection near some sutures did not count.

Damian thought they absolutely should, but he hadn’t argued. He would have counted them for himself, though.

“If I’m sore, we’ll stop,” Jason is saying now to Father, standing by the driver’s side. The trunk of the car is packed with actual bags this time, clothes and toothbrushes and shower gel and cell phone chargers, instead of the jackets and wallets that had been their only company on the trip almost a year ago.

“If I’m too tired, I’ll let Damian drive.”

“The hell you won’t,” Father snaps, looking at Damian with a warning glare. “And don’t you dare ask him, either.”

“I will not, Father,” Damian says with a small sigh. He’s too excited about this trip to push buttons or resist in any way. He’s worried that if he causes trouble, Father will change his mind about skipping school until after Thanksgiving for a ‘family emergency.’ And Damian supposes it is like an emergency, of sorts-- Jason _died_ again and ever since the older boy was allowed to get out of bed, he’s been unpredictable and nervous.

“I wish you’d just agree to fly,” Father says to Jason, leaning on the hood while Jason sits in the driver’s seat and turns the key. “If you’d change your mind, I’d drive you to the airport right now and we’d get you the next flight out.”

“No,” Jason says, sounding irritated. Damian climbs in the passenger seat and buckles. If Jason does change his mind and Father drives them, Jason can move to the back seat.

Father’s frown is wearing deep grooves on his face.

“No planes,” Jason says, glaring at the dash. “I’m fucking claustrophobic.”

Father’s face changes then, the frown fading. He leans into the car and clasps Jason’s head toward him, presses his forehead against Jason’s.

“Okay,” he says, letting go. “Keep me updated. Damian, be good.”

“I am always good,” Damian says. “But good is relative.”

Father is still leaning down next to the car when he points a finger at Damian and replies, “No, it isn’t. You know what I mean. Don’t cause any trouble.”

“I’ll beat him bloody if he does,” Jason answers, buckling, his hand stuttering a little as it crosses his body.

“Tt,” Damian says, crossing his arms. “I will not cause trouble.”

“Have a good trip,” Father says, standing. “I’ll see you there for Thanksgiving. I love you both.”

Father has gotten _strange_ this past week.

“Love you, too, B,” Jason says. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of Demonbird.”

“I can take care of myself!” Damian protests.

“I’m worried about you,” Father says to Jason at the same time, and Damian is mollified.

“I also love you, Father,” Damian says, his arms still crossed.

Jason swings around to look at him with an expression of exaggerated shock.

“Did you hear that?” he asks Father. “He said the L word.”

“Knock it off, Jay,” Father grumbles, but he’s got a small smile tugging at his mouth.

Damian smiles but it’s smug and satisfied.

They pull away from the Manor while Father watches with his hands in his pockets.

Jason sighs when they’re halfway down the drive and mutters, “I just need to get out of this freaking city.”

He leans back a little in the seat and adjusts the angle so his arms are propped on his knees.

“I can drive,” Damian says. He knows he’s gotten bigger the past year; he looks older. He’s only got an inch to go before he catches up with Tim and he’s already got wider shoulders, heavier muscle mass. He doesn’t look just twelve.

Jason glances at him.

“In Pennsylvania,” Jason says. “On that long stretch of Amish country. We’ll alternate after that, but I have to drive when we’re near cities.”

“Agreed,” Damian nods, biting back a grin.

Then he changes his mind and grins openly.

After all, it’s worth a grin: they’re going to the Kent Farm.


	2. In Which a There is a Call for Help

The previous road trip to the Kent farm, they’d barreled right through the drive fueled by adrenaline and lingering rage. But this time, when the sun has set and headlights have flickered on along the interstate, Jason is beat.

They’ve done eleven hours on the road, and other than a two hour stretch through Pennsylvania that Jason immediately felt guilty about, he’s driven the whole way. 

His arms ache and his chest hurts and he just wants to lie down. Letting Damian drive was not quite a mistake, because the boy was so thrilled it put him in a good mood (for Damian, anyway) but Jason is feeling kinda fricking awful after lying to Bruce, twice.

Because technically Dev hadn’t cleared him to drive. Dev had cleared him to go. And they weren’t quite the same thing.

“We’re getting a motel room,” Jason tells Damian as he takes the next interstate exit. He’s starting to feel like he’s probably not safe to drive.

“A motel,” Damian says, looking at him. “We’re not poor.”

“Speak for yourself, Richie Rich.”

“He’s your father, too,” Damian says, annoyed. “Motels are filthy. I would prefer to wait in the car.”

But Jason doesn’t hear any of his grumbling. 

He looks at the boy and ruffles his hair, even though his arm is killing him. 

“A hotel,” he amends. “Whatever’s available.”

Jason pulls into the next hotel parking lot he sees and it is thankfully nearly deserted, but it has bright lights out front and a clean lobby. He makes Damian wait in the car while he checks in and then they go up a back staircase with the keycard.

On the second floor, he hands Damian the key and lets the boy hunt for the room number. 

Inside the room, Jason flops belly-down on the first of the two beds still in his clothes and shoes. 

“It is only eight in the evening,” Damian informs him, standing at the foot of the bed.

“Yup,” Jason says.

“You were not ready for this trip,” Damian says, sounding vaguely disappointed.

“Nope,” Jason agrees. “Fuck.”

Damian walks away from the bed and Jason, with his face pressed into the quilted comforter on the bed, can hear the bathroom door open and the faucet running. A moment later, the boy is right next to the bed again and he says, “Sit up.”

And he sounds almost exactly like Bruce.

Jason rolls over with a groan and doesn’t sit up. His arms are too rubbery and limp for him to prop himself on the bed. Damian doesn’t wait for him to try and he doesn’t repeat himself. He kneels next to the bed and Jason can see out of the corner of his eye, Damian’s concentrated expression as he peels back the bandage on Jason’s arm.

“Will we have to amputate?” Jason asks, looking away from his arm. “Give me the worst of it now.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Damian snaps. “Your sutures just need to be cleaned.”

Jason falls asleep while Damian is working with a washcloth and a cup of water. He wakes when the younger boy is talking on the phone, ordering what sounds like Thai food.

“There’s cash in my wallet,” Jason says, before falling asleep again. He’s so worn out it feels like sandbags are dragging his eyelids down. 

When he wakes again, he’s still drenched in fatigue like lead poured over his limbs. The alarm clock next to the hotel bed reads one in the morning. He looks around the room– Damian is asleep in the other bed, take-out containers are stacked neatly on the edge of the desk. 

He knows in his gut he’s already overdone it. He could push through, get there hanging by a string, and then recover. But he’s got Damian with him. 

Jason knows he would never forgive himself if his arms or chest seized up while he was driving and they wrecked. The way he feels right now, he can’t overlook the possibility. It wouldn’t be stubborn, it would be fricking stupid.

He sighs and looks at Damian’s sleeping form, flat on his back with most of the pillows thrown to the side and the extra blankets shoved to the foot of the bed. There’s fan running under the window despite the cold outside. 

They could kill a day here in the hotel, try again the day after– but that means making Damian wait and paying for another night in the room, which just galls him. Jason swallows and registers how dry his mouth is; he drags himself out of bed and stumbles to the bathroom to get a drink.

He pointedly doesn’t look at himself in the mirror. He doesn’t want to see how rough he looks, especially without the hat he’d tugged on while they were driving, to hide the long line of tiny sutures across his forehead. It’s grotesque in a way that he jokes about with Dick and Stephanie already, but that actually turns his own stomach into tight knots.

At least it won’t scar too badly. He has the crazily neat and tightly spaced biodegradable suture knots to thank for that. 

He sits in the chair by the window and cracks it open to smoke, blowing the gray clouds out into the chilled night. Or morning. Whatever.

This is all his own fault.

He was the one who pushed to leave as soon as they did, he insisted he was okay, he was less than honest with Dev and then with Bruce about the details. 

Compounding and complicating his guilt is the realization that it was only a year ago he was spending most days sitting in the Manor reading to Bruce. He remembers how angry he was when Bruce started shutting down again, how furious he was with himself when he started losing patience.

They had something for a few months and they almost lost it completely again. And ever since right before Bruce went to Europe, they’ve been tentatively rebuilding. It’s been easier to go home. After a mountain of groundwork, it has been easier to talk, to discuss, to listen. 

And he might have just screwed it all up.

After grinding out the cigarette on the outside windowsill and tugging the pane closed, he pulls out his phone, stares at it, sighs again.

 _Better a witty fool than a foolish wit,_ he thinks.

He presses the call button.

“Is everything okay?” Bruce answers almost immediately, his voice gruff. There’s a roaring in the background. So he’s out, up high, somewhere with a lot of wind. Jason shudders thinking about how cold it is three hundred feet up in Gotham right now.

And his pride is a dam in his throat.

“Jason,” Bruce says, a little more urgently. “Are you okay?”

“B,” Jason says, and the skin on his arms burns and his bones ache with deep tired. He tries again to speak, to just say what he knew what he should have asked back at the Manor.

“Dad, can you come give us a ride?”

Jason closes his eyes.

“Are you both okay?” Bruce asks again, less stern and more worried.

“We’re fine,” Jason says quietly. “Nothing fucking happened. We’re at a hotel in Illinois, just east of St. Louis, but I don’t think I’m safe to drive.”

There’s a long, long silence with nothing but the sound of the wind through the cowl.

Jason closes his eyes and decides to just bite it all off at once, deal with the fallout all in one fell swoop.

“And I let Damian drive for two hours.”

Still silence, except for the roaring.

“I’m really sorry,” Jason says, angrily pressing on the inner corners of his eyes. His fingers come away wet. 

“Stay there,” Bruce finally says, sharply. “I’ll be there soon.”

Jason isn’t sure how Bruce travels there or finds exactly where they are, but he wakes in the chair a little under four hours later to knocking on the door. Damian sits straight up in bed and looks at Jason; there’s a bedside lamp casting soft yellow light across the room but it’s still dark outside the window.

Damian makes it to the door first and has to stand on his tiptoes to look through the peephole. 

He looks back at Jason, startled, and then opens the door.

Bruce is there in slacks and a gray coat. Jason cannot read his expression, which probably just means that Bruce isn’t sure what will end up claiming dominance in his reaction. 

“Damian,” Bruce says, firmly but kindly. “I want you to go get Jason’s meds out of the car you came in. And then wait in the hall.”

Damian nods and snatches the keys from the desk, his whole body moving fluidly and silently, the way he would before a physical fight.

He’s halfway out the door when Bruce says, “After we get breakfast, I’m driving you the rest of the way.”

Damian nods again and closes the door.

Jason stands and tries to square his shoulders, but he falters, his back slightly bent. He’s too tired. He feels the weight of Bruce’s anger like a suffocating blanket over the room.

When he can’t stand it anymore, he lets his gaze flick up and over at Bruce, who is standing with his hands in his coat pockets just watching him.

“I’m sorry I didn’t offer to drive you yesterday,” Bruce says. “I should have. I’m glad you called.”

There are no words Jason could have been more surprised by. It takes a minute for them to sink in and when they really hit him, he’s undone by them. His sore arms are just hanging at his sides and he’s crying.

And in the next second, Bruce has him wrapped in a hug.

“I just had to get out of that fricking city,” Jason says into Bruce’s lapel. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Bruce says. “I’m not angry. I understand.”

A minute later, Bruce guides him back to the chair and takes off his coat after Jason sits down. Bruce throws the coat into the bed and then crosses his arms and frowns, looking at Jason like he’s a puzzle.

“I can’t figure out why the hell Dev thought you were okay to drive.”

“He didn’t,” Jason says miserably. “He just said I was okay to go.”

“Hn,” Bruce says. He sits in the other chair, on the other side of the little round table. “You lied to me.”

It’s just a statement. Jason nods.

“Hn,” Bruce says again. Then he looks across the table at Jason and Jason meets his eyes. “I want to be very clear that the only reason I am letting this slide– the lying, letting Damian drive– is because it has only been a week. You cannot pull stuff like this.”

“I know,” Jason says quietly. He just wants to sleep, he’s so tired.

“But Jay, I’m glad you called me. I want you to be able to ask for my help. I’m going to let Damian back in the room. You’re going to take those meds. And then you’re going to stay awake until I get some food into you, then you can sleep the whole rest of the trip if you want.”

Jason nods, rubbing at his face with the hem of his shirt.

“Damian,” Bruce says, opening the door. The boy scrambles to his feet from where he was sitting against the wall. He has two orange prescription bottles in his hand. He hands them to Bruce.

“Is the hotel already setting out breakfast?”

“I will go find out,” Damian says. 

“If they are, bring back some toast and juice for Jay. I’ll go back down with you after.”

Bruce measures pills out into his hand and brings Jason a cup of water.

“Thank you for coming,” Jason mumbles, taking the meds. “I’m still really fricking sorry.”

“It’s okay, Jay,” Bruce says firmly. “Sometimes you just need to get the hell out of dodge.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updating now because I might not get to tomorrow!


	3. In Which We Look at the Stars for a While

“How you doing, honey?” Martha Kent sits down next to Bruce on the top step of the front porch, where he stopped on the way to the car. He’s been watching the stars with his hands jammed in coat pockets, after staying until both boys were in beds and asleep.

Martha links an arm through Bruce’s and scoots close to him in the chilled air. She looks up with him at the sky just beyond the roof awning above the porch.

“I don’t know,” he says. “Thanks for offering to host them for a bit.”

“It’ll be good to have them. It’s been lonesome ever since Conner went to spend the year with Clark. And besides, you know Jon and I think of you like another son,” she says. “Even if we don’t have much right to. You and your kids are always welcome here.”

“I’m afraid I’m giving you the difficult ones,” he says ruefully.

“You think we don’t like a challenge?” Martha teases, jabbing him gently with the elbow linked through his.

He sighs, a long and shuddering sigh.

“I don’t know what the hell I’m doing,” he says quietly. “I don’t know how much Clark told you…”

“A bit,” she says. “Not everything. He was pretty upset. He’s a good storyteller except when he’s emotional.”

“He was right to be,” Bruce says. “He died, again, Martha. Jay’s heart stopped. For twenty minutes, while I did CPR and Dev stitched his arteries back together.”

“Sweet Jesus,” she whispers, hugging his arm.

“I don’t know what the hell I’m doing,” he says again. “I’m going to get them all killed. I didn’t ask for this. All I wanted to do was fix Gotham and every time I turn around, there’s another kid who needs me. I’m the last man alive that should have kids, but I can’t bring myself to say no.”

Bruce knows he sounds bitter. But there’s such a short step from how he feels to breaking down, he needs his anger.

“Oh, honey,” Martha says, leaning her head against his shoulder. “You’re so hurt and blessed at the same time, you don’t even know how good you have it.”

He stiffens. He can’t help it.

“I don’t think you understand,” he says.

She lifts her head and fixes him with a hard stare.

“Bruce,” she says sharply, “I think Clark must have convinced you he was some sort of golden child.”

He makes himself meet her gaze and he feels raw and inside out. Her expression softens and she relaxes again, squeezes his arm a little.

“Did you know I was sixteen when I married Jonathan?”

“Clark has mentioned it.”

“Jonathan’s Pa died and his mama just about died of heartbreak herself. They had to put her in a home. He took over the farm and I didn’t see any point in waiting. All I wanted was to be a wife and a mother. We were gonna have a whole baseball team. I finished school while he planted corn, and it was five years before we found out I couldn’t have children of my own. Think on that. Twenty-one years old and a doctor is telling you you’ll never be a mama, the only thing you ever wanted to be.”

Martha sighs. Bruce is quiet.

“It was another three years before we found Clark. I was so mad at the world, I didn’t even want to keep him. I did it for Jonathan at first. And you know,” Martha pauses her and her voice takes on a steel quality.

“You can’t ever tell Clark a word of what I’m about to tell you,” she says. “It would break his heart and I won’t have it.”

Bruce nods.

Martha takes a deep breath.

“It only took me a few days to fall in love with him. But he was a hard baby. He was mourning something fierce before he even knew how to talk about it. He didn’t need to be big to know he’d lost everything. And his powers came and went at first; one day I could cut his hair, the next month he’d break my shears. And my _lands_ , the tantrums he could throw. I never regretted the choice we made to keep him, but there were days I didn’t think we’d survive; my hand to God, I was sure he’d kill us both by accident.

“I’d ask the other mamas at church for what advice I could, but even keeping back his powers, it didn’t take me long to figure none of them had boys quite like Clark. We were lonely and scared and somehow in the middle of it, we figured a thing or two out and made it work anyway. But we never could go adopt another baby, once I’d come to terms with it. We talked about it more’n a few times, but just when we’d about made up our minds to try, he’d scorch a hole in the truck or collapse a wall in his bedroom, and I’d just look at Jonathan and we’d both know it would be murder to bring a normal baby in. So it was just us and Clark and we had plenty of happy times. We weren’t miserable, just scared out of our wits some days.

“I know what it’s like to parent a hard child, Bruce. It’s not anything anybody asks for. But you wouldn’t have let those children into your heart if you weren’t ready to be their father.”

“I know,” he says quietly after a moment.

“I wish I could talk to your mama,” she says, nudging him. “Lord, how I’d brag on you. What you do isn’t easy, and I’m not talking about the cowl. And you’ve been growing by leaps and bounds the past two years, don’t think I haven’t noticed.”

Bruce wipes one side of his face with the back of his hand.

“The cowl is easier,” he says, laughing a little.

“Oh, I know it,” she says. “Saving the world is a hill of beans next to being a good daddy. I see how it weighs on Jon.”

“I wish I could carry it for him, for Jay,” Bruce says, stretching one leg down the steps. “For them both. All the nightmares, the hurt. I can handle it. I hate watching them figure out how to. And I can’t even talk to them about it half the time. I don’t know where to begin.”

“I know, honey,” Martha says. “But they need you to. You’ll get there if you don’t stop trying.”

Bruce nods again, looking down at the steps and then up at the sky.

“Am I a bad father for letting them out there?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Martha says. “I think you ended up with a bunch of fighters and you give them something to fight for. Wasn’t Jason stealing tires from your car when you found him?”

“He was,” Bruce laughs. “The little punk. Right off the Batmobile. He hit me with a crowbar, too. I had a bruise for days. That kid needs a break, Martha.”

“We’ll take good care of him,” Martha says. “And Damian. They’re both sweet boys. They just don’t know how to show it yet.”

“Don’t let Damian hear you call him that,” Bruce warns. “He might never forgive you.”

“Oh, he’s a puppy,” Martha says. “He’s all sharp little eyeteeth, trying to figure himself out. He’ll be just fine here. You go home and take care of the rest of them for a bit, take care of yourself.”

Bruce nods and inhales deeply of the night air.

“I’m going to miss my flight,” he says, looking at Polaris and Ursa Major swinging around the sky. “It’s 11:15 already.”

Martha peers up at the sky and then checks her watch. She whistles softly.

“You are going to tell me how you do that, because I’ve been watching those same stars with my own eyes for well over sixty years now and I can’t for the life of me figure it out.”

Bruce pulls the hand of his free arm out of his pocket and points.

“The outside cup of the Big Dipper,” he says. “It makes a line to the North Star.”

“I see it,” Martha says, leaning her head to look.

“It’s a clock face,” he says. “Except it goes counter-clockwise, and every mark is an hour of twenty-four instead of twelve. And you have to adjust for the season. It’s November 14th, so that’s about eight and a quarter from March 6th. The line is between the three and four marks, a little closer to three, so three minus the sixteen and a half, makes it minus thirteen and a half hours before midnight. Add an hour for daylight savings, shave off fifteen minutes for the slant to three, and it’s 11:15.”

“You lost me,” Martha breathes, squinting at the stars. “Where in God’s green earth did you learn how to do that?”

“A book,” he says, grinning a little. She elbows him.

“You and Clark both,” she mutters. “Always were too bright for your britches and no common sense. You could just look at a watch like normal folk.”

“But then it isn’t any fun,” he replies. “No challenge.”

“C’mon back inside,” she says, tugging a little on his arm before she lets go and stands up, stretching stiffly. “It’s 11:20 now and freeze your butt off cold. We’ll make up a bed for you and Jon can take you to the airport in the morning.”

Bruce nods and looks at the stars for another minute.

“They aren’t this bright in Gotham,” he says, climbing to his feet.

“Well, money can’t buy everything,” she says, tugging open the door. “And I can hear Jon snoring in his chair. We outlasted him. Lemme see if I can find us some pie.”


	4. In Which We Create Some Seasonal Artwork

“This is juvenile,” Damian protests, frowning at the spread of construction paper and crayons and markers on the kitchen table. It’s only the second day they’ve been at the Kent farm and his two days have been a mix of working with Jonathan and the animals and Martha catching him by his shirt and pulling him inside to help cook or clean or, now apparently, do _crafts_. Childish crafts.

“Jon! What age does juvie stop taking kids?” Martha calls out to the back deck, where Jonathan is sitting drinking a cup of coffee.

“Mm, eighteen or sixteen. Depends on the crime,” Jonathan calls back.

“So you’re juvenile, then, Damian.”

“Tt,” Damian says, his mouth still twisted into a grimace, all his attention on the green piece of paper in front of him.

A chair scrapes back across the floor and Jason joins them at the table. He takes the green paper from in front of Damian and plants his left hand on it.

“I’ll do it,” he says, “and I’m _not_ juvenile. I’ve just never done one.”

“Tt,” Damian says, less defensively, watching Jason trace his own hand with a marker.

“What do I do here?” Jason asks Martha, pulling his hand away and looking at the gap where his wrist was. He rubs his left arm a little.

“Just make a curved line,” she says, tracing her finger across the paper.

Damian sighs.

“Do you have a white piece of paper? I would prefer that the paper not disrupt the colors of the crayons.”

Martha digs in the pile of paper and hands him a white sheet, faintly fuzzy with the pilling of coarse paper.

“Would you like me to trace your hand?” Martha asks. 

“I can do it,” Damian says, putting his hand down and splaying his fingers. He traces his hand with a black marker, but the paper slips as he goes around his palm and he jerks his hand back with a noise of disgust. He throws the marker down and crumples the paper and sits, scowling again.

“This is juvenile,” he repeats. “And I am _not_ juvenile, even if Todd is.”

“Oh, do you mean Jason?” Martha asks mildly, watching Jason color in the turkey with a scribbled attempt at a tribal pattern. Right below the table out of Martha’s line of sight, Jason gives Damian the middle finger.

Martha puts another piece of white paper in front of Damian and stands behind him, takes his hand and sets it on the paper. He lets himself go limp as she arranges his fingers. This is the most humiliating activity he’s had to undergo in years, school included.

She leans over him, her head next to his, and he can smell the faint tang of her soap– it isn’t chemically sweet and fruity like Stephanie’s, or made of floral oils like his mother’s perfume. It’s clean and neutral, the way the soap in the school bathroom smells. 

“How old are you, Damian?” she asks, tracing his hand.

“Twelve,” he says. “Until my birthday, which is sometime in the spring.”

“You don’t know when?” she sounds surprised, but only mildly.

“Father has approximated the date based on the circumstances he is aware of, but it is not exact. And there are details that complicate things.”

Martha lifts his hand off the paper and he looks at the handprint. It’s smaller than he was expecting. He glances at his own hand, and then over at Jason’s paper. The older boy has given the turkey a cigarette and an eyepatch and he is sketching an intricate machine gun under one hastily drawn claw.

“Don’t forget the safety,” Martha says to Jason. “You don’t want him to trip and slaughter the hens.”

“Hm,” Jason replies, adding a small notch to the side of the trigger base.

“When do you celebrate your birthday?” she asks.

“I do not, despite repeated attempts from both Pennyworth and Stephanie. The date Father gave the school is a false one and I will not celebrate a manufactured occasion.”

“Well, that’s just hogwash,” Martha says briskly. “You aren’t manufactured.”

“If Mother would return Father’s messages requesting information about my early life,” Damian retorts, picking up a brown crayon, “then perhaps the matter could be settled.”

“Bruce called Talia?” Jason asks, his marker stilled and his head jerking up. He has a distant look in his eye, a slight frown on his lips. 

“That is what I was told,” Damian answers stiffly. He wishes they’d both stop talking. And he wants Martha to keep asking him questions all day long.

“Hm,” Jason says again, returning to the gun. Damian stops making brown feathers with flicks of the crayon tip to watch Jason doodling small purple and pink hearts around the weapon.

“We had to pick a birthday for Clark,” Martha says, sitting across from them and beginning to trace her own hand. “It didn’t seem right to pick the day we found him. He seemed a few months old. Woulda seemed fishy.”

“How did you choose?” Damian asks, working with an orange crayon now. 

“Jonathan picked. I was overthinking it, trying to count back, crying about my mother’s birthday, wondering how I’d explain things to my older sister. I told Jonathan the numbers for one date looked funny and felt wrong, and he took over. Just closed his eyes and jabbed a finger at the calendar and said, ‘this one.’ 

“I complained. It was a mite too arbitrary for my tastes. But Jon just looked at me and said, ‘Well, now, Martie, it’s not like we would have gotten to pick if you’d had him yourself now, is it?’ And that was that.”

“Tt,” Damian says.

“What day did your father give the school?”

“April 13th,” Damian says, focusing on the feathers filling the outline of his smallest finger.

When he looks up from the paper, Martha is writing in a small calendar booklet and the junk drawer behind her is halfway open. 

He thinks he will sigh but instead he finds that he is smiling. He ducks his head, biting his lip, and works on the feathers again.

Jason stands and crushes his paper into a ball.

Martha holds out her hand and he hands it to her, and she smooths it out against the table.

“I won’t hang it up,” she says. “But I’d like to keep it.”

“Whatever,” he says casually, rubbing his left arm again. 

“Fuck,” he mutters quietly and she looks up at him. Damian looks up, too, to see what she will say.

“Are they sore?” she asks, standing. “I’ll get some ice.”

He just nods. 

Damian searches the table for a tan crayon. He finds one and adds flecks to the body of the turkey. 

“I’m gonna go call Dev,” Jason says, when she hands him a baggie of ice. 

“Go ahead,” she says. “And get some rest. We’ll have supper at six, but I’ll keep a plate warm for you if you’re sleeping.”

She sits back down at the table with Damian and props her chin in one hand. 

“That’s beautiful,” she says quietly, looking at the detail he’s adding to the beak.

“Tt,” he says. And then he adds, “thank you.”

When he finishes, she takes a magnet and tacks it to the fridge. 

“Why don’t you go help Jonathan with the tractor?” she suggests, and sure enough, the deck is empty and there’s an empty mug on the glass table. 

Damian nods and puts his boots on by the side door. He glances once more at the turkey and grins a little. He doesn’t let the door slam behind him.


	5. In Which We Read a Book

Freezing rain patters against the living room windows and Jason is glad to be inside a warm living room, stretched out on a couch with a blanket and a cup of hot chocolate. It’s almost too good to be true. Despite the soreness in his arms reminding him that he is, in fact, awake and not dreaming, it seems dreamlike in so many ways.

In the kitchen, Martha Kent is washing dishes and he hears the water shut off. He looks up from his book when she opens the side door and yells,

“Damian Wayne! You get yourself inside before you catch your death of cold!”

The boy shouts something back that Jason cannot make out.

“C’mon, then. Inside now. Hurry up, I’m letting all the cold in,” Martha says firmly.

The side door closes and then bangs open again a second later, and Jason can hear Damian stomping his boots on the mat.

“I _patrol_ in worse than this,” Damian protests angrily. “This is mild.”

“Well, now,” Martha says, and through the doorway Jason can partly see her, taking Damian’s dripping coat and hat, “if you see any skyscrapers out there, you let me know and I’ll think on mending my policy. Until then, I’m not eager to call your daddy and tell him we’ve had to take you to the hospital with pneumonia.”

“I wouldn’t go to the hospital,” the boy snaps. “I’d call Dev. And Jonathan is out there.”

“Jon Kent is a grown man,” Martha says, “and he has the good sense to stay in the barn working on whatever it is he’s got himself into, not tear around in the mud like a bat outta hell with a crazy dog.”

Outside, Sadie whines, and Martha cracks the door open to say, “you’re a filthy mutt and you can’t come in; get yourself to Jon.”

She closes the door again and says to Damian, “Go on up and take a shower and bring those wet things down after. You’ll have to stay in until I can wash this coat of yours.”

He stomps all the way up the stairs, growling.

Jason flips back the blanket and walks to the kitchen doorway.

Martha is standing with the coat in her hands, looking it over. It’s dripping and mud-splattered. She sighs before she sees him there, leaning against the door frame.

“Want me to wash it?” Jason offers, feeling a pang of guilt. He’s the one that brought Damian here, and the kid isn’t her problem or her headache to deal with.

“Oh, no,” she says absently, after turning quickly to see him. “Don’t worry about it, honey. It’s just some laundry. How are you feeling?”

“Been better,” he says with a shrug that he immediately regrets. “Been worse.”

“You need anything before I run this down to the cellar?” she asks, folding the coat over her arm. There’s a dish rack half full of drying dishes and more in the sink. Martha catches his gaze.

“Don’t you dare, Jason Wayne,” she chides him. “You leave that to me for now. I’ll let you help enough when you’re well.”

He frowns and resigns himself to other plans.

“You said Clark had more books,” he says. “Is it okay if I go in his room to look?”

“Of course, honey,” Martha says with a smile. “You go on and look all you want. If you can’t find what you have in mind, we’ll go to the library tomorrow.”

She opens the door to the cellar and disappears down the dim staircase.

Upstairs in the hallway, he can hear the shower still running in the bathroom. He stops at the first door on the right and turns the knob.

Inside the room, he heads directly for the packed bookshelf on the far wall, set between the corner and a window.

The library and study at Wayne Manor are full of books organized by a careful system, on shelves built to size. The bindings are not cramped or pressed, the collection curated to avoid overcrowding.

But this shelf is packed densely with books, the top two shelves of smaller paperbacks double-shelved. In the spaces on the lower shelves, where the standing books are short enough, there are books lying horizontal across the tops of others’ spines. There are stacks set in front of shelved books, some overhanging the shelf they sit on.

There is no apparent order other than size and many of the books have worn and faded corners, marking them as revisited favorites. Most of the ones here are the books of youth, children’s and young adult fiction, classics with painted covers, books of nonsense poetry or nonfiction junior science collections.

Jason scans the shelves not certain what exactly he is searching for, making mental notes about things he wants to come back for but doesn’t want or need right now.

Then he sees it.

 _The Wind in the Willows_ by Kenneth Grahame. He pries it off the shelf, moving _Wulf the Saxon_ by G.A. Henty and three hardback Hardy Boys mysteries out of the way to get to it. There’s a James Herriot collection nestled behind the Grahame and he takes that, too, and then turns to leave the room.

And now that he isn’t focused on the books, he sees it all. The double bed with the faded quilt and pillowcases covered with dinosaurs, the Star Wars poster, the Rush poster, the pastel cross-stitch of the Lord’s Prayer, the lamp with a base shaped like an owl.

It is so different from the slum tenements of Gotham, from the landing field-sized bedrooms of the Manor, from his own neat and stylized apartment he keeps now; it is so normal and lived-in, even after nearly twenty years of Clark’s adulthood, that it annoys him. They’ve never repurposed the room and it smells freshly cleaned, of paper and oil and pine, as if ready for use at any moment.

He shuts the door behind him as he goes out, still irritated, feeling guilty on top of it like he’s violated some kind of privacy.

Damian is in the hall with wet hair, pulling a shirt over his head and the bathroom fan running behind him.

Jason takes a breath to clear his head, finds some focus in the ache of his arms.

“Grab your sketchbook,” he tells Damian. “I’m gonna read to you.”

“I am capable of reading to myself,” Damian snaps.

“I didn’t freaking ask you,” Jason says, glaring at him.

They glare at each other for a long moment.

Jason sighs, weary all over, and trudges down the stairs alone. There had to have been a better way to handle that but it’s too late now.

He’s sitting on the couch sipping lukewarm hot chocolate a few minutes later when Damian comes down the stairs with his dirty clothes and towel under one arm and his sketchbook and pencils under the other.

The boy goes into the kitchen and then comes back with the sketchbook and sits down on the living room floor.

“I will let you read to me,” he says. After a pause, he adds, “if you still want to.”

The book is already in Jason’s hands. He opens it, flipping through filler pages and table of contents to the first chapter.

“What is the book called?” Damian asks, dragging a charcoal pencil across his paper in a sloping arc.

“The Wind in the Willows,” Jason answers.

“Tt,” Damian says. “I will stop you if I find it unsatisfactory.”

“It’s about animals,” Jason adds.

“Tt,” Damian says again.

Jason begins reading.

He’s only a page and a half in when Damian interrupts, “This is _not_ about animals. This is about anthropomorphic creatures.”

“Do you want me to stop?” Jason asks peevishly.

Damian shakes his head and leans closer to the sketch he’s working on.

Jason resumes reading.

Alfred might read to Damian sometimes, less now than he used to, and Bruce might read to him occasionally, but Jason wields a secret weapon. Jason does _voices_ and he knows half of them are awful and half of them are decent but he does them anyway, even enjoying himself despite Damian’s non-reaction.

He uses a tremulous voice for Mole and a Cockney twang for Rat and peppers other accents and timbres throughout, forgetting for a bit the ache in his arms and the faint throb in his head.

And when he rattles off Rat’s breathless list of luncheon basket contents,

“coldtonguecoldhamcoldbeefpickledgherkinssaladfrenchrollscresssandwichespottedmeatgingerbeerlemonadesodawater,”

there’s a noise from Damian that makes him pause and look up, pulled out of the language of the book just long enough to scowl at Damian for snickering at him.

But Damian has a pencil in one hand and his other hand over his mouth, still focused on the paper in front of him, and he’s giggling.

Jason grins and keeps reading.

Thirty minutes in, Damian flips the sketchbook closed and rolls over on his back, fingers laced behind his head as a pillow, to listen.

Occasionally, from the kitchen, Jason hears Martha chuckling or laughing.

He reads for over an hour before she stands in the doorway and waits for his attention. Jason stops reading and notices that the rain is still beating against the windowpanes, but the sky has grown dark with evening.

“Supper,” she says quietly, with a gentle smile.

As soon as he checks the page number and closes the book, all the feelings held at bay descend on him again. His arms, his head, his chest, his fatigue. But when he climbs to his feet, Damian is also getting up and the boy is still grinning and it’s absolutely worth it.

When he passes Martha on his way to the dining room, she puts a hand on his shoulder and kisses his cheek.

“What a good brother you are,” she says fondly, and tears spring to Jason’s eyes. He ducks his head away and swallows and blames his exhaustion.

Later that night, he goes into the borrowed room he’s using, a floral guest room with faded wallpaper, and there’s a small drawing on the bedside table of a Rat and a Mole in a row boat.


	6. In Which We Have a Difficult Night

A scream wakes Damian and he sits bolt upright in bed, his hand searching at his side for a weapon that isn’t there, but would be if he were at home in Gotham. There’s another scream and he leaps out of bed toward the door. Another step and he’s in the hall, just in time to hear a third scream that breaks into a ragged groan.

Jonathan is coming out of the guest room down and across the hall, holding a hand to his lip. Martha is facing him, her back to Damian, with a robe wrapped around her shoulders over her nightgown.

It is deep, deep dark outside the window at the end of the hall.

“He’s still asleep and he’s thrashing around,” Jonathan says, “and he kicked me. Got me pretty good, too. I think there’s blood on the carpet and the sheets, though.”

“Go on downstairs and clean up. I’ll go in,” she says. There’s another cry from inside the room and all three of them flinch in the hall.

“You shout if you need help,” he tells her.

“What are you gonna do, old bones?” she retorts. “Come get kicked again?”

“Not me,” Jonathan says, chuckling, “Clark.”

Martha swats at him as he walks away, but then she turns to the door and her expression grows somber. Neither of them noticed Damian standing there, and when she steps into the room, Damian creeps forward to watch through the open door.

“Jason,” she says, between a whisper and a command. “Jason.”

The older boy sits halfway up in bed, his eyes wide and white, his hair a sweaty mess sticking up in silhouetted relief against the moonlight from the window behind him. Damian stands, pressed against the wall, peeking around the doorframe. Jason is awake now but hyperventilating.

Martha Kent climbs onto the bed and sits with her back against the headboard. She gathers Jason into her arms, cradling his head and chest against her bosom.

“Shh,” she says, while Damian watches. Jason is turned away from him now, and he can see Martha rubbing her hand in slow circles on Jason’s back. “Shh, it was just a nightmare. You’re safe.”

Between gasping breaths, Jason protests, “It’s never nightmares. It’s fricking real. Fuck.”

The last word is a drawn out moan, the held vowel clipped by the sharp consonant just as Damian thinks it will trail off.

Martha’s hand on Jason’s back stops moving for just a second, just long enough for Damian to see that it does. Damian is leaning against the wall now, his throat tight and sore without him wanting it to be.

“Shh,” she says again. “You’re safe right now. Whatever it was, it’s over, and you’re here. You’re right here.”

Jason begins to sob, his body shaking with the force of it. And Damian, watching from the hallway, does not feel the derision he expects. He waits for it to surge up in him, the disgust he knows himself to carry for weakness, but instead he feels hurt inside, in its place. It is a wound deep in his ribs and his belly that frightens him, and even his own revulsion at the fear isn’t enough to drive it away.

He forgets he is supposed to be hiding and he stands, half-behind the doorframe, half on the threshold of the guest room, openly watching. They still don’t notice him. He clenches and unclenches his fists.

Damian loses track of time as he stands there, listening to Jason sob and feeling each groan like a knife in his own gut, unable to leave or move away. Martha is still rubbing Jason’s back, saying quiet and meaningless words of consolation.

After a while, when the moonlight streaming through the window has shifted into deeper darkness, Jason is quiet. Martha looks over then and Damian knows she’s seen him.

“Go on back to bed,” she says softly. “Everything’s alright.”

Damian doesn’t move. He swallows and sniffs. His nose and throat feel the kind of angry he wishes he could feel, instead of whatever this is inside him.

Martha watches him for a minute; he can feel her eyes on him as he watches Jason’s shoulders rise and fall slowly in her arms.

“Come on in here,” she says, patting the far side of the bed.

Damian can move now, and he does, into the guest room and around the bed. He climbs up next to her and she holds an arm out. He leans against her stiffly, uncertain where he should be or where to put himself, and he hates it, he hates not knowing what to do with his own body when it is the one thing he is so good at controlling.

But with his muscles tense and his head against Martha, he is distracted by Jason. The older boy’s sleeping face is only inches from his own, and while Damian knows his own face to be dry and clear, Jason’s is dry and tear-streaked and even in the shadows he can make out deep circles under Jason’s eyes.

He studies him carefully, examining the face and his own feelings, and finds that even now he doesn’t think of Jason as weak.

“Were you out there the whole time?” Martha asks him in a whisper.

Damian nods against her, not taking his eyes off of Jason.

“Oh, Damian,” Martha says quietly. “He’ll be alright. He just needs time and a few good cries.”

“Crying is for the weak and ineffectual,” Damian replies automatically, without any real feeling behind it.

“Oh, hogwash,” she says, still whispering. “I’ve never heard such nonsense in all my life. A real man isn’t crippled by a bit of saltwater. It’s unhealthy to keep it all bottled up, like poison. Rots your bones.”

Damian considers this.

He watches Jason sleep, Martha’s arm hugged around his own shoulders while her other arm still rubs circles on Jason’s back.

The light from the window changes from waning moonlight to rising dawn, casting new shadows across the room until even the shadows fade and Damian can see how pale Jason is, how unlined and slack his face is in sleep now.

Damian sniffles.

Martha’s hand is on his forehead a second later.

“Honey, you’ve got a fever,” she says. “How long you been feeling sick?”

“I don’t know,” Damian says, shivering suddenly. He relaxes a bit against her, just because it’s taking too much energy to stay tense and prepared.

He doesn’t remember falling asleep, but he must, because the next time he opens his eyes, Martha is gone and he’s curled on his side with a pillow under his head. Jason is lying next to him, watching him now as he wakes up.

Damian’s throat stings and his nose and head feel thick.

“Hey, Demonbird,” Jason says with a grin.

“Zombie Boy,” Damian tries to say scornfully, but his voice is too hoarse. He’d heard Dev call Jason that a few times back at the Manor and thought it would be good to use. He doesn’t sound as sharp as he’d like, though, and there’s a flash of dark emotion across Jason’s face. It’s gone a second later.

“Damian,” Jason says, as if amending his earlier form of address. The older boy yawns and stretches, then tugs the quilt back around his shoulder. “Feeling rough?”

“Not as rough as you,” Damian retorts, shivering again. He wishes he could stop being mean; he remembers the wrench of his stomach hearing Jason cry in the dark, but for all his precision and control he can’t seem to stop himself now. Jason doesn’t appear to mind much though, because he chuckles.

“You stubborn little shit,” he says kindly.

Damian sits up and starts to slip out of bed away from the older boy. Jason grabs his wrist and says,

“Nope, Martha told me to keep you here. She went to get medicine.”

Damian jerks his hand away and Jason gasps, squeezes his eyes shut. Damian freezes, looking down at his own wrist, then Jason’s arm. The bandages covering sutures on the arm he just wrenched away from.

“You…” Damian starts to speak, to say Jason shouldn’t have touched him, that he should have known better. But he stops himself. He looks at Jason’s face again, twisted now in pain.

“I’m sorry,” Damian says quietly, forcing the words out of his sore throat.

“It’s okay,” Jason says, his face gradually relaxing again.

Damian lies back down, scrunching himself under the covers. It does feel sort of nice. His body feels so cold. He closes his eyes.

When Martha comes into the room a few minutes later, he sits up and takes the medicine without arguing though he had planned to, he accepts the tea she gives him in a mug without complaining.

After she goes back downstairs, he sips it and makes a face. Jason is sprawled on his back on the bed still.

“I miss Alfred’s tea,” Damian admits quietly, keeping his voice low so it doesn’t carry down the stairs.

“You’re a spoiled brat,” Jason says affectionately. “Don’t get out of bed.”

Jason himself climbs out of the bed and leaves the room. Damian drinks more of the oversweet tea. It’s bitter on his tongue but soothing on his throat. He hunches down against the propped pillow and holds the mug with both hands.

A minute later, Jason returns and climbs back under the quilt with a book in his hand, sitting up against the headboard like Martha Kent did just hours before. He opens the book and glances down at Damian.

“Want me to read?”

Damian nods.

“You’re gonna laugh,” Jason warns. “If you spill hot tea on your balls, it’s not my fault.”

Damian grins into his tea.

“I won’t spill it,” Damian says, trying to sound angry and failing. His voice is too scratchy.

“Just fucking saying,” Jason says lightly, looking at the book. “Don’t come crying to me.”

Damian glances up sharply at him, trying to determine if this is intentional or not, if Jason knew he had been standing in the hallway. But Jason has already started reading and Damian decides there did not seem to be any hidden message in the phrase.

He finishes the tea in one long drink and sets the mug down on the bedside table, then rolls over to face Jason and the book again and lies down to listen.

And even though he feels awful, Jason is right, and more than once, he laughs.


	7. In Which We Are Not the Places Where We Want to Be

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gore warning, just FYI. Sorry this chapter is so late! Hopefully the delays/waits won't be that long again.

Jason wakes to the sound of sizzling and for a moment, he panics. Then the smell of bacon follows it and he relaxes in the bed with a tired sigh. He grabs for his phone on the small desk next to the bed and checks the time.

It’s a little before nine in the morning. He’s missed messages from Alfred and he replies, then rolls off the bed and yawns. He pulls an old long sleeve Henley over his head, tugging the cuffs gently over the gauze on his arms.

Downstairs in the kitchen, Martha is picking bacon out of a skillet with a fork and putting it on a plate lined with paper towels.

“Good morning,” she says, nodding to the coffee pot. “Just made fresh. Help yourself.”

She pours the bacon grease over a bowl of dog food and scraps that’s sitting on the floor, then bangs the side door open and drops the bowl on the little patio there, whistling and calling sharply, “Sadie!”

Jason gets a mug out and pours a cup of coffee. He thinks about going out to the deck to smoke while he drinks it, but decides to sit at the kitchen table instead.

“Supposed to be real nice out today,” she says while untying her apron. She joins him at the table with her own mug of coffee and the plate of bacon. “Jonathan and Damian ate already and I don’t think they’ll come in again until forced. I’m going into town for some volunteer work I do, and you’re welcome to come, or you can stay here and have the house to yourself.”

“What kind of volunteer work?” he asks.

“Oh, there’s Wichita State extension program. I help tutor some girls in remedial math for their GEDs. There’s a little holiday party for them today. There wouldn’t be much for you to do, but you could walk to the library.”

Jason glances out the window. It does look beautiful outside and he’s been in the Manor or the Kent house for two weeks now, except for traveling, but he’s still reluctant to get out. He doesn’t want to deal with people or conversations or anything, really. Except…Thanksgiving on Tuesday is in three days and then he goes back to Gotham.

He might as well bite the bullet and get it over with. He’s going to have to manage real life again eventually. He’s going to have to manage it soon.

“Yeah, I’ll come,” he says, taking a piece of bacon. “When do you need me ready?”

“I need to leave at a quarter to ten,” she says. “Did you have a good night?”

He knows she’s asking, _Did you have more nightmares?_ and the answer is yes, he did, but they weren’t as bad.

“It was okay,” he says, shrugging one shoulder. “I slept, anyway.”

“Good,” she says, patting his shoulder and standing. “Make some toast for yourself. I’m gonna go get ready.”

The drive into town doesn’t take long but it still feels too short. Jason feels like he could ride in the car watching the land roll by for hours, just to be moving and not stationary. He wants a break from being inside houses, sitting around with stinging arms and itchy sutures– but he doesn’t want to go _to_ anywhere else, not Smallville or Wichita or Gotham or anyplace he’d have to stand and talk and exist in one spot. He tugs the edge of his knit cap down a bit further over his forehead.

When she stops and parks outside of a squat, pale brick two-story building off the tiny Main Street of Smallville, he wants to beg her to keep driving instead. But he is quiet, and with monumental effort and a clenched jaw, he climbs out of the car. He takes a deep breath the November air through his nose and looks around.

Martha picks up a plate of cookies from the backseat of the car and looks over the top of the maroon sedan at him. She seems a little distracted when she says, “Library’s right down the street. That green building. Just tell them you’re visiting us and Karen will let you check out anything under my name. You’re also welcome to come in, but it can get a bit noisy.”

“Okay,” he says, swallowing his tension into something he can manage words around. It’s just Smallville for fuck’s sake, not Arkham or Blackgate. “I think I’ll just walk around.”

“I’ll be on the second floor in the Extension Program room if you decide you want to join us,” Martha says with a smile. “You’re more than welcome.”

Jason nods and she goes inside the building, pushing open the door that reads _Smallville Community Center_ in vinyl white letters. He stands in the parking lot for a long time, just watching the scattered foot traffic of the sleepy town. It seems like a sort of dead time, or maybe it’s just always like this.

A blue passenger van pulls up into the lot and parks two spaces away from him. The door slides open and two teenage girls climb out. One is in shorts and a red cami despite the autumn chill, the other in jeans and workboots and a pink camo hoodie; they both unstrap babies from car seats inside the van, one after the other. One baby has a headband with a cloth flower as big as her head, the other is a toddler clutching a sippy cup to his chest over his Superman t-shirt.

One teen girl gives Jason a hard look, as he leans against Martha’s car with his thumbs hooked in his pockets. He matches her gaze and her glare deepens. She whispers to the other girl and they both laugh and go inside, trailed by a woman typing rapidly on her phone with the van keys tucked into her pocket.

He sighs and takes a step away from the car. And then another and another and another until he’s just strolling toward the library, jaunty and free. He tilts his head, the way he’d hold his chin up if he was going to whistle.

It’s only experience that makes him so good at masks.

Jason feels the absence of his holstered gun like that of a phantom limb– he doesn’t feel naked, he feels crippled. With his arms still twinging when he bends them too quickly and useless in a fight, the missing gun feels like quicksand. He’s sinking in the lack of safety, scrambling for a handhold and the threat of going under is so intense that it’s not until he reaches the library doors that he’s aware his mask has shattered. He’s been walking faster and faster, his head bent down and fists tightly balled at his sides.

He relaxes, on purpose. This is Smallville. He’s not sinking he’s just standing on a cement sidewalk in what is probably one of the safest towns in America.

Jason goes inside the library and wanders around the old metal shelves with their faded paint. He scans the book titles and forgets them as soon as he’s read them; he doesn’t know what he’s looking for.

No, he knows what he’s looking for.

It’s escape.

At the end of one row, he’s so jittery he just grabs a thick tome at random from the shelf labeled Nobel Laureates. He doesn’t bother flipping through it before taking it to the front desk, where a woman with a name tag that says _Karen_ is tossing her blonde braid over her shoulder. She looks up from the books she’s stacking when he sets his book on the desk.

“Hi, there,” she says with a smile.

“Hey, Goldie,” he says, his jitters clamped down like something under restraint straps. Pretending is second nature to him when it comes to saving face; even before Bruce drilled the use of masks into him he used them for survival. He can be disarming, charming, freaking lovely.

“You’re new in town,” she says evenly, taking the book from him and flipping it over.

“Martha Kent told me to ask for you but she didn’t tell me you’d be so young and pretty,” he says casually, leaning against the desk. Pain shoots up his arms when he leans and he has to press his tongue against the roof of his mouth to hold back a gasp or a wince, and he turns, shifts his weight to his hip so he can cross his arms like he meant to do that all along.

“Do you know the Kents?” she asks neutrally, but there’s a small smile on her face, at the corners of her eyes.

The trick was to say pleasant things without stepping over into being creepy. This woman was probably in her thirties and he wanted her distracted, not interested. If he pressed for details about her, commented anything specific, she’d probably recoil in defense.

“I’m staying with them,” he says, “and I’ve been told to check that out on Martha’s card, but only if it’s not gonna get you in trouble.”

“I’m the branch manager,” she answers dryly. “I think I’ll be fine. How do you know Martha and Jonathan?”

And Jason feels a moment of social panic, separate from his other anxieties throwing a block party in his chest, because he realizes he doesn’t know the story here and he doesn’t want to screw stuff up by contradicting things.

“Family friends,” he settles on, guessing this is vague enough to be safe.

“I went to school with Clark,” she says, handing him the book.

“Listen, ma’am, I know Clark and there’s no way in hell you’re old enough,” he says with a serious expression. She laughs.

“You’re sweet,” she says, “but I’m definitely old enough.”

“I had you pegged for twenty-five, Goldie,” he says with a rakish grin. “Not a day more.”

“I’m way out of–”

A library patron, an older man sitting at one of the ancient computers in one corner off to the side of the desk, turns then and loudly says, “ _Shhhh_ ,” in an insistent and annoyed way.

Jason’s grin freezes on his face.

“Sorry, Mr. Edmund!” she says with obviously forced cheerfulness, handing him the book.

“I’ve left my twenties behind,” Karen adds in a whisper to Jason, “but you have a good day and tell Martha I said hello.”

Jason nods and leaves the library, making it outside before his grin vanishes and it takes everything he has not to sprint down the sidewalk.

Bruce had asked him, once and only once, _Can you tell me what happened?_

The answer had been no, and Bruce for once in his freaking life, didn’t press or insist. Jason suspected he wasn’t even thinking about either helping or criticizing him, though a few years ago criticism is all he would have heard in the question. It was probably something more practical, like improving defenses or patching weaknesses in the system.

But the answer had been no, not because Jason didn’t want to talk about it but because he doesn’t really remember.

Or, didn’t. Didn’t remember.

Until that old man shushed them and now it’s coming back in jagged pieces, and he doesn’t think he could outrun it if he tried. He just needs to find somewhere to _be_.

His feet carry him down the sidewalk and away from the library. He’s not sure where he’s going, just that he needs to go. No, he knows where he’s going– he’s running a rooftop and it’s nighttime.

He’s hunting Zsasz.

And he’s tracked him, he’s got street rat intel and those kids are sharp as tacks. This warehouse he’s leaping onto is where someone saw him go not twenty minutes ago, and Red Hood is hoping it’s a base of some sort and not a hostage situation.

Batman would be quiet and slow, Nightwing would go fast and silent, but Red Hood is Red Hood. And he’s got twin modified Colt M1911 .45s in his hands as soon as his boots hit mossy, bay-dampened pea gravel and water-proof black tarp on the roof.

“Lucy, I’m home!” he shouts down the roof stairwell after he’s kicked the broken door out of the way.

Some rogues might hear him and flee but Zsasz has a taste for flair. Zsasz will stick around and fight.

“Aw, little boy, come join the party,” Zsasz shouts back.

Red Hood is an idiot, because Red Hood trusts his guns, and he clomps down the stairs. He stops two steps shy of the bottom and puts his boot tread down more carefully, hoping the dissonance will work in his favor. And he’s not killed anyone for a long time, not since before Bruce’s surgery, but if Zsasz actually has someone already tied up in there he’s gonna break his streak.

But there isn’t anyone.

Just Zsasz sitting under construction lights, casting black, black shadows in slivers where his body blocks all three beams at once. He’s sharpening a knife and when Red Hood steps forward into the dim circle outside the lights, one gun raised and aimed at Zsasz’s chest, Zsasz tsks at him.

“Oh, little zombie bird,” Zsasz says and Red Hood’s gut turns to ice. “You’re not supposed to be alive, you know.”

“I know,” Red Hood says angrily. This is too personal, too fast. It means that Joker is _talking_ about him and while his stomach is ice, his blood is boiling. His finger curls around the trigger of the Colt. “But I’m a contrary son of a bitch.”

“Ah, but I’m going to need your cooperation,” Zsasz says, bending over. He holds one hand up, placating in defense of the gun. When he stands, there’s a crowbar in his hands.

Jason feels himself pale under the helmet.

There are some things you just can’t ever be braced for.

“Hood, do you have a location for Zsasz?” Oracle asks through the earpiece. “C’mon, you guys, why is nobody reporting in?”

“Shhh, take it off,” Zsasz says, nodding. “Take the helmet off. Not a word to your Batdom.”

There’s no way Zsasz heard Oracle but he’s not a stupid man. Not stupid the way Red Hood must be, to be standing there frozen with the weight of a gun in his hand and sweating palms, racing heart.

“Come make me, you clammy papercut,” he spits out. If Zsasz takes one step toward him with that crowbar, he’ll go down in the same step with a bullet in him.

Zsasz is tossing the crowbar from one hand to the other and Red Hood should just _move_ , take him down now, shoot him in the kneecap and watch him writhe.

But instead his eyes are tracing the arc of the crowbar and his mouth is like sandpaper.

“Insults aren’t going to get you anywhere. And I think you’ll take the mask off yourself. I can be pretty persuasive,” Zsasz says, tucking the crowbar under one arm and pulling up a phone.

“Why won’t _anyone_ answer the damn comm?” Oracle demands.

Red Hood is silent.

“I’ve heard you have a thing for damsels in distress. And you aren’t the only zombie bird.”

There’s a picture on Zsasz’s phone, held out to Red Hood, of a girl in a Batgirl suit, tied to a table– no, it’s a video. She’s struggling against the straps holding her down.

“Fake,” Red Hood accuses. Why is it so hard to swallow?

Zsasz is still holding the phone out, but with his other arm he’s taking practice swings through the air with the crowbar, showing off. He shrugs.

“He thinks we’re posers, Two-Face,” he says.

The video shifts; Two-Face is standing near the table, looking annoyed. Batgirl is shouting into the tape across her mouth. There’s blonde hair peeking out beneath her cowl.

“He’s an idiot,” Two-Face answers. “They all are.”

Zsasz presses a button and the screen goes black.

“So, here’s the deal, zombie bird. You’re a disgusting insult to the natural order of things and I fully intend to resolve you. But jury is out on whether your dear sis– is she a sis? maybe a Catbrat?– really died or not. If it means bagging you, I’ll take my chances. But I’ve been locked up, I’m outta practice.”

“Hood, Batgirl, Red, report; Black is with me. Nightwing and Robin are managing Bludhaven,” Batman’s voice fills the comm in his helmet.

“Thank _God_ , someone is out there, it’s like everyone fell off the planet,” Oracle answers.

“I don’t wanna fight,” Zsasz says, swinging the crowbar like a baseball bat at the air. Jason’s Colt is trembling in his hand. “But you kill me, Two-Face here’s gonna off the girl. But you work with me a little, take the mask off, lay down your pieces, and you buy her a fifty-fifty. We’ll leave it to his coin if you cooperate.”

“I’ve got a lead on Penguin,” Red Robin says over the comm. “I’m in the 800 block of 65th.”

Red Hood closes his eyes. He can taste blood in his mouth.

_Steph. They have Steph._

Fifty-fifty is better than sure. And Two-Face is principled enough, in his own weird way, that he’d stick with the coin’s decision. And if Zsasz is fighting him hand to hand, that buys the others time.

Red Hood takes the mask off and drops it.

He sets the guns down, kicks them across the floor.

Zsasz grins at him, a cold and shining smile.

“Thataboy,” he says, “Two-Face was wrong; you’re not an idiot.”

And then Zsasz throws the crowbar. It spins through the air in an underhanded arc and automatically, Jason puts a hand up to catch it before it hits his face.

He doesn’t see the lead pipe Zsasz has snatched up until its swinging at his head. He can’t duck in time; it makes impact with the side of his head when he’s trying to twist away with the crowbar still ringing against the bones of his hand. He goes down, dazed but not unconscious, and Zsasz sits on his chest with a knife out.

Jason is stunned all over, his body numb with the blow to his skull.

“You know how you kill a zombie?” Zsasz asks, testing the knife on his thumb while sitting astride Jason. “You gotta destroy the brain.”

When he presses the tip of the knife to Jason’s forehead, his whole body jerks in retaliation but his arms won’t obey him.

“Shh,” Zsasz says, looking at the knife. “Huh. You still bleed.”

“Fuck you,” Jason finally manages, through the fire of what feels like his forehead being peeled off. And his arm is working again, the ringing in his left ear doesn’t stop him, and he hits Zsasz as hard as he can across the neck.

He must still be moving more slowly than he thinks because somehow Zsasz has time to drag another knife across the arm limp on the ground as he bends under the blow.

Blood shoots up from his arm like a geyser and Jason has just enough time to think, _oh shit_ before Zsasz is on his other arm and panic is swallowing him whole, the sick freak is standing and wiping his knife on his pants and if Jason could just reach his helmet Steph’s on her own or maybe they’ve found her already and he’s made a mess of everything and his heart is racing and he can’t slow it and his life is pooling around him on the warehouse floor shining like wine beneath the lights and his phone is buzzing in his pocket and he grabs it like a lifeline.

“What?” is what he says when it’s by his head, because what else do you say when you’re dying and take time to answer the phone?

“Hullo, Zombie Boy,” Dev says, apparently unphased. “Daily check. Do you still have arms?”

Jason shudders and looks down.

He’s standing on the shoulder of a country road.

“Um,” Jason says and why is he trying to catch his breath? Was he breathing before?

“Jason,” Dev says through the phone, “are you alright, mate?”

“I think,” Jason says, glancing over as a car goes by him. “I think I was…I don’t know, it was a memory? A flashback? I don’t know where I…”

He looks over his shoulder and he can see Smallville in the distance. Blood is dripping off his fingers. No, there’s no blood. He’s just staring at his clean hand.

“Tell me what you see,” Dev orders. “Describe it in detail.”

“Um, there are fields…”

“Color?” Dev asks. “I’m stupid. I’ve never been in Kansas before. Write me a bloody novel.”

Jason takes a deep breath and it surprises him that he can. He studies the horizon.

“There are brown fields. The corn stalks have been mown down. The sky is blue and clear and it’s warm today. There’s gravel on the side of the road and someone filled a bunch of potholes not too long ago. The tar is still bright.”

“Good,” Dev says. “Do you’ve a cigarette?”

Jason tucks the book between his knees, pats his pocket, opposite his wallet.

“Yeah.”

“Light one up. I want you to stand there and smoke and not move until you’ve finished it off.”

“Sometimes, Dr. Frankenstein, I think you might be fucking with all of us. Are you even a real doctor?”

Jason has a cigarette out and leans the phone against his shoulder while he lights the cigarette, one palm cupped against the wind.

“You know, I don’t remember,” Dev answers. “Med school might have been a sodding bad dream.”

“I’m gonna walk back to town while I smoke,” Jason says, trying to figure out what to do with the book. He gives up and sits down with it on his lap, unsure how to manage the phone, the cigarette, and the book all at once. “Nope, I’m just gonna sit the frick down next to the road.”

“Do you’ve a ride?” Dev asks.

“Yeah,” Jason says, “Martha.”

He takes a long drag on the cigarette and his fingers aren’t trembling as badly now; it’s grounding him, and so is sitting on the rough pavement.

“I’m A-OK now,” Jason says, “Never better. You can hang up.”

“Eh, I’m rather bored,” Dev says. “I’ll stay on. It’s better than spinning in my office chair.”

“You could do both,” Jason says, laughing and coughing a bit. “Then close your eyes and try to walk.”

“And risk a black eye? Nah, I’m mental but not _that_ daft. Do you want to talk about it?”

“Nope,” Jason says, sucking in a lungful of nicotine and smoke and reality. “I abso-fucking-lutely do not. How are your wrists?”

“Aside from not your bloody problem? Just brilliant. Don’t worry about me. How’s the farm?”

It sounds like Dev actually _is_ spinning in a chair; there’s the faint clack of caster wheels in the background.

“The farm’s nice,” Jason says, grinding the cigarette out on the black asphalt. “I mean, it’s actually really cussing peaceful. I shouldn’t have left today.”

“It’ll get easier, Zombie Boy,” Dev says quietly. “Ring anytime.”

Jason stands and brushes flecks of gravel off his pants and palms and starts walking back to town.

“How would you fricking know that?” he says, his voice hard. He’s lived with memories for so long, he knows that some shit never fades. Most of his life is one bad flashback, really.

There’s a long silence on the other end of the phone and Jason pulls it away from his ear to make sure he didn’t lose signal or drop the call. But the bars still hover at two and the connection timer is still ticking seconds. He holds the phone against his cheek again.

“My da put me in a sodding coma when I was a lad,” Dev says, his voice steady and gathered. “I remember it, but it’s not every bloody time I close my eyes anymore. Just don’t wait twenty years to talk about it, yeah?”

“Okay,” Jason says, with a slight involuntarily shudder. “Just not right now.”

“Fair, mate,” Dev says. “It doesn’t even bloody need to be me. Just somebody. It’ll get easier. Now! How are your arms?”

“Fine,” Jason says. “Sore. Fucking frustrating. I’ll live. I think I see Martha.”

There is a car cruising toward him and he can make out her face through the windshield now.

“I’ll ring again tomorrow, or text,” Dev says. “And I’ll see you Tuesday. Don’t get into anything stupid. Quit smoking. Cheerio, Zombie Boy.”

“You give the most fricking contradictory advice,” Jason says with a grin. “Motherballs, it’s like a dadgum choose your own adventure.”

“Motherballs,” Dev echoes, a little hollowly, “might be the most terrifying thing I’ve ever heard anyone say.”

“Cheerio,” Jason says and he ends the call just as Martha pulls up beside him and rolls the window down.

“Hey, stranger,” she says. “I thought that was you. Hop in.”

He climbs into the passenger seat and she gives him a warm smile, but there’s a crinkle of concern around her eyes.

“You okay, honey?”

Jason looks at the Wichita State University brochure on the divider between the seats. He picks it up and turns it over in his hands after buckling.

“What’s this?” he asks, even though it’s sort of obvious what it is, he wants to know _why_.

“I’m helping one of the girls apply,” Martha says. “I need to stop at the grocery store on the way home. I’ve gotta get my tush moving if we’re gonna have enough to eat for Thanksgiving dinner. You want me to take you back to the house, first?”

“Nah,” Jason says, realizing he’s really looking forward to being back at the farmhouse and maybe reading to Damian or just taking a walk that’s intentional. But he doesn’t want to be an inconvenience. “I’ll just sit in the car and read, unless you need help.”

“Oh, I’ll be fine,” Martha says. “You just take care of yourself.”

They chat about other things, like the Thanksgiving menu and favorite foods and how strange the weather is, until they get to the store. He tries to focus on reading but doesn’t get very far, and when she comes back out to the car with a cart full of groceries he gets out to help.

“My arms are fine,” he says, when she opens her mouth to protest.

“Alright,” she says with a twist of her mouth. “You just be careful.”

They’ve got all the bags loaded and he’s got a hand on the trunk to push it closed before he can shape the words and get them out over his tongue and teeth.

“I’m not ready to go back to Gotham,” is what he settles on saying. It’s ambiguous. He could go somewhere else. He’s not technically asking anything.

“Jason,” Martha says, shooing his hand away and slamming the trunk shut, “you stay as long as you need. Now let’s get back to the farm and find some lunch, and maybe we can wrangle that brother of yours into some more crafts.”

“That,” Jason says, relieved to his core, “sounds fricking delightful.”


	8. In Which We Are Reluctant for Change

The cup of flour is overflowing and Damian Wayne levels it with the edge of a butter knife. He dumps the measured flour into a bowl while glaring at it. He can help, but it doesn’t mean he’ll _enjoy_ it. Beside him, Martha hums and reads over a recipe.

Damian already spent the whole morning outside, feeding livestock and doing chores with Jonathan Kent, and he was ready to spend the rest of the day out of doors. He’s looking forward to certain aspects of the holiday celebration but also reluctant to think about it too much, because family arriving means he will also be going home soon. 

He misses patrol. He misses Father and Grayson and Titus and Malcolm and Alfred and Pennyworth. He misses his own room. 

But he also does not want to leave. He wants to have the fields to roam, the cows and pigs to check on and feed and pet, the creek to examine, wood to chop, the chickens to watch, the eggs to gather. As much as he misses patrol, it has been easier than he expected to be away from it, because everything here is so _physical_. When his arm was broken the summer before, his days at the Manor were miserable. He worked on the Batmobile and improving some devices in the Cave and sketching and reading, but without sparring or running Gotham rooftops, his limbs were jittery and unsettled, his heart thudded with habitual adrenaline that lacked an outlet. 

That does not happen here.

Here, there is _always_ something to do– and Jonathan has been explaining crop rotation and plowing while they pitch hay and Damian, if he is completely forthright, really wants to drive one of the tractors. Maybe even the combine harvester, which has impressive and pleasing rows of metal teeth. 

And though he grumbles, he enjoys helping Martha, too. It’s just that today, preparing food for the influx of people in the evening and for the actual formal dinner tomorrow, reminds him of how little time he has left before he has to go home.

He wants to go home.

He doesn’t want to go home.

“I don’t know about this recipe,” Martha says out loud, and she seems to be speaking more to herself. “I’ll give it a whirl but it just seems off.”

“Is it one of Alfred’s?” Jason asks from behind Damian; Damian dumps another cup of flour for pie crust into the bowl before he turns to look at him. Jason has looked tired the past few days; Damian doesn’t think he’s sleeping very well. 

“It is,” Martha says, hmm-ing at the recipe. 

“I’ll make it,” Jason offers, stepping up to the counter and holding a hand out. 

“Who taught you how to cook?” Martha asks, eyeing him sidelong. 

“Alfred,” Jason says and Martha puts the recipe in his hands.

“Knock yourself out,” she says. “Damian and I are gonna finish up these crusts.”

So Damian stands and cuts butter into flour the way Martha is showing him, while Jason works at the stove with a pot and a whisk. 

Once the pie crust is mixed and chilling in the fridge, Damian is put at the sink with dishes to wash and Martha excuses herself from the kitchen to pull a turkey out of the cellar freezer. Jason hasn’t said much since joining them, which Damian thinks is unusual because the older boy is fairly good at casual conversation.

And Jason has even been getting Damian to chat with him recently; they finished _The Wind in the Willows_ and started a collection of stories about farm animals that would seem too childish to Damian if not for the language. They’ve been talking about the stories, and over the weekend Clark Kent came over and they watched that show Jason and Tim quoted at each other.

Damian didn’t particularly like it much, but he liked it more than he had been expecting. 

“I’m not going back to Gotham with you,” Jason says abruptly, when Damian turns a bowl over and sets it in the drying rack. Damian looks over at him. Jason is cutting up an onion and watching the knife move up and down against the layers of the bulb. It’s hard to tell from his tone what precisely Jason is feeling. 

Damian feels a stab of anger in his gut. 

“Don’t tell Bruce. I’ll talk to him,” Jason says quietly. 

“Why would I tell Father? I don’t care what you do,” Damian spits out, scrubbing at a fork with the sudsy washcloth. Jason stiffens next to him; Damian notices because he’s watching the utensil in his hands and also paying as much attention as he can to how Jason moves and acts.

“You’re right,” Jason sighs, bitterness clear in his voice now. The ambiguity of his tone is gone. “I don’t know why the hell I thought it would matter to you. I guess I forgot for a minute that I was talking to Prince Asshole instead of my little brother.” 

Damian freezes, the water running hot over his hands and the fork he’s holding. 

It’s been a long, long time since Jason has been that _cruel_ to him. 

He drops the fork in the sink and turns the water off.

He’s halfway out the side door, the fields beckoning, his hands still wet and spotted with dish soap when Jason says,

“Wait.”

Damian stops and glares at him.

“What? Were you going to–”

“I’m sorry,” Jason says, meeting his glare with tired eyes. “I shouldn’t have…I mean. Fricking heck. I didn’t think you’d be that upset.”

“I’m not upset,” Damian retorts, one foot still out the door. “I’m annoyed. You were being rude.”

“I was and I’m sorry. But you were upset _before_ I insulted you, you little cuss, and it caught me off-guard,” Jason says, returning to the half-chopped onion.

The words of protest die on Damian’s lips and he steps back inside, allows the screen door to close against the autumn chill.

“I’m angry,” Damian says simply. It’s true, he _is_ angry and he doesn’t know why. It’s not like he particularly needs Jason in Gotham. From his perspective, they’ve had a fairly pleasant series of interactions this week, but he doesn’t feel dependent on Jason’s company or presence. 

“Go chop some wood,” Martha says, coming up from the cellar. “Don’t let it go to waste.”

Damian glances at her face to determine if she’s mocking him, but she looks perfectly serious, maybe even a little distracted. She pats his arm.

“Go on,” she says. “You’re no help scowling and stomping around. You Wayne boys all need to work it off first.”

Damian is caught between stubbornly insisting he’s fine and going out the door and letting it slam behind him. His fists clench and unclench at his side but Jason makes a little strangled sound and he looks over sharply to see the older boy biting his lip and looking quizzical, maybe amused.

“Martha,” Jason says, briefly meeting Damian’s gaze, his eyes shining and his darker emotions of the moments before falling from his posture, “you say that and I feel like you’re talking about Bruce.”

Martha shrugs matter-of-factly, “Your daddy and Tim. Not at the same time, of course, but I’ve put them both to work before when they’ve needed it.”

Damian’s eyes widen a little despite himself. 

He goes out the side door and doesn’t bother arguing with Martha about whether he needs to chop wood or not, about whether or not he can control his own anger. 

Damian spends the next twenty minutes with the feel of the axe handle dragging against his palms, the wooden stick rough and smooth in patches beneath his fingers. It is smoothest in the place where Jonathan’s hands would rest, the grip just a bit beyond Damian’s own hands so he feels the less-worn gaps when he lifts it over his head and swings it down against the propped section of log. He splits it down the middle, tosses one half to the side and splits the remainder again. 

Over and over, until sweat is dripping into his eyes even with the November chill. When he stops to wipe his brow with the back of his sleeve, he senses someone watching him and he turns to look. 

Clark Kent is standing ten feet away, his hands in his pockets. He’s dressed in khakis and a button-up, his glasses on. When Damian looks at him, he steps forward and starts picking up the pieces of wood scattered around them and stacking them in the large, neat pile between two trees. There’s a blue tarp under the wood and it crinkles when Clark steps on it.

“She put you to work, huh?” Clark says, and he sounds sympathetic.

“She’s always putting me to work,” Damian grumbles, but he’s not exactly unhappy.

“This is one of my least favorite chores,” Clark says, and he’s moving slowly– not really slow, Damian realizes, but unhurried. It’s a human pace. Clark could be done already and he’s choosing not to be.

“I like it,” Damian says, the axe propped on his shoulder. He doesn’t miss Clark glancing at the axe blade.

“You know, that doesn’t surprise me. You know why I hate it?” Clark is almost done with the jumble of firewood now and Damian isn’t helping. He should put down the axe, slam the blade into the stump in front of him until he walks back to the barn to hang it up. But he doesn’t, and within himself, he cannot determine why.

“Why?” Damian asks after a delay that feels too long, belatedly realizing he was promoted.

“Can’t cheat. Well, I don’t think it’s cheating, but Ma does. I tried, too. Tried using superspeed and the axe couldn’t handle it. The head flew right off and landed in that field,” Clark points, craning his neck to see around a small cluster of young trees on the bank, “those trees weren’t there. Landed just a few inches from Ma’s favorite cow. It startled her so much she fainted. Did you know cows can faint? We found her just lying in the grass next to the axe. Ma thought I’d killed her. I thought she was gonna kill me.”

Damian is trying incredibly hard not to grin but he’s failing. 

“No,” is all he says. 

Clark chuckles.

“You’re just like your dad,” he says, “I’m throwing myself under the bus here and you act like it’d be a personal insult to yourself to just smile.”

Damian grins, but he looks down at the ground and pretends to be studying the grass beside one boot.

“Anyway,” Clark says, stacking the last two pieces and brushing his hands off, “I tried heat vision, too.”

There’s a long pause after he says this and it forces Damian to look up, understanding blooming in his mind the second he does so, the second he sees Clark’s sheepish and candid expression.

“It’s wood,” Damian says flatly. 

“Yep,” Clark nods and rubs the back of his neck. “Set the log on fire. The old stump. The tarp. Half the wood pile went up before I thought to just freeze it all. If I’d thought Ma was gonna kill me over the cow…well, it wasn’t exactly a pleasant week. Cut a lot of wood that summer, as slow as she could make me go.”

Damian is laughing now, one hand over his eyes. He moves it to look at Clark and he sighs. 

“I don’t think my father was ever as stupid as you,” he says bluntly, still biting back giggles.

Clark holds his hand out and Damian hands him the axe. The alien slams the sharp blade down into the scarred and pitted stump.

“I think we’re going to have to make sure Alfred remedies that assumption real soon,” Clark tells him, looking only mildly injured. “They’ve just kept all the good stories from you.”

“But not you?” Damian challenges, raising an eyebrow.

“Gee whiz, but you look just like him sometimes. And of course I’ve heard them. I’m a journalist. Getting stories out of people is what I do. C’mon, let’s go see if I got all the right stuff for hummus.”

“Hummus?” Damian echoes, genuinely startled.

“Aw, shoot,” Clark mumbles, looking toward the house. “I didn’t know it was a surprise.”

“What did you do now?” Martha Kent calls out from the open kitchen window. Damian can barely make her own in the dim inside of the house, but she can evidently see them. “I know that face, Clark Joseph Kent. Fess up.”

“The hummus,” he calls back, a little strained.

“Good _lord_ , Clark,” she snaps back and the window slams shut.

Damian is unmoving, a flurry of excitement and apprehension. It’s not like he can’t get hummus in Gotham, now that he and Stephanie Brown have made a circuit of all the restaurants with it on the menu. They’ve even made it a few times. It’s that Martha would think of making it just _for him_ , but now she also seems to be upset and he swallows, uncertain what to do or say. Maybe she’ll change her mind and not make it at all.

The window opens back up and Martha shouts, “Well, never mind. It’s just as well. I need the two of you to translate these labels for me anyway. But God only knows how you’ve managed a secret identity. I’ve never met a body worse at keeping his mouth shut.”

Clark shrugs at Damian.

“I’m in news,” he says, a little defensively.

“Translate labels?” Damian asks.

“She sent me to Tehran. She said it all had to be fresh or authentic.”

Damian walks ahead of Clark toward the house so the man doesn’t see the tears that fill his eyes and threaten to overflow. He doesn’t want to rub at his face or do anything that draws attention to himself, so he only takes a deep breath when he pauses on the side porch to kick off his boots.

And then he steps into the muggy little kitchen, thick with the scent of onion and garlic and yeast. There are bowls of bread dough rising on the stove top and Jason is scraping something into a casserole pan. There’s a space on the counter full of wax paper packages and glass jars and small paper bags and two plastic grocery bags, battered and with faint blue script on them.

Martha is washing a bowl and Damian, his eyes still stinging and wet, goes straight to her and wraps his arms around her and buries his face in her shoulder. He’s almost as tall as she is. He doesn’t care that Jason is right there or that Clark is behind him– well, maybe he cares a little, but not enough. 

She pauses, her hands held stationary above the bowl in the sink and she leans into his embrace a little in return.

“Thank you,” he mumbles into her shoulder.

“You’re a good young man, Damian Wayne. Don’t let anyone tell you different,” she says. “I’m gonna miss having you around.”

And instead of making him feel better, this makes Damian feel wretched. His tears are drying but he’s profoundly aware of how many times in the past week he’s grumbled or complained or whined or stomped around about things she asked him to do or told him to do. But the longer he hugs her, the more even that pang fades.

She reaches a damp hand over and pats his cheek. 

“Now you read these labels off to me so I don’t get things mixed up. If this recipe’s a flop, we’ll try again.”

When he lets go, the warmth lingers on his arms for a long time. Jason and Clark are already in the other room, talking. He helps Martha with the labels and starting the hummus, then she shoos him out of the kitchen when Clark comes back in and he leaves them together.

He finds Jason in the guest room upstairs, stretched out on the bed, reading. He climbs onto the bed next to him and sits with his legs crossed. He waits until Jason looks up at him.

“Want to keep reading?” Jason asks. 

“I’m sorry,” Damian says. “I wasn’t angry. I was jealous. I want to go home. But I also would like to stay.”

“It’s okay,” Jason says. His book is closed, one finger held between the pages to keep his place, and he lifts it and taps Damian on the head with the stiff cover.

Damian ducks away and then scoots across the bed to sit next to Jason. 

“I would enjoy it if we continued reading.”

“Wanna get your sketch stuff?” Jason asks, setting his book down on the nearby desk and picking up the James Herriot collection they’ve been reading.

“No,” Damian says. “Not right now.”

Jason opens the book and clears his throat to start reading, but then he doesn’t start. After a moment, Damian leans forward to scan the older boy’s face. Jason’s jaw is working tightly.

“I’ve been thinking about going to school,” Jason says after another minute. “But it’s probably a fucking awful idea.”

Damian is quiet but realizes Jason isn’t telling him, he’s _asking_ him. 

“I do not think it is a waste of time,” Damian says. “And it would provide a suitable distraction if you are remaining here for an extended period of time. It will likely grow boring after a while.”

“Without you, you mean?” Jason asks with a relieved grin, nudging Damian.

“Yes,” Damian says, returning the grin. “That is precisely what I mean. Now read.”

“Yessir, Prince Asshole.”

“Do not call me that.”

“As you wish, Prince.”

“You’re still implying it.”

“Yes, I am. Now shut up and let me read.”


	9. In Which We Are Excessively Silly

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! this chapter is so late. The update schedule will probably be more like once a week or so now while I work on some other projects. I'm so sorry!

Dick Grayson is in a pretty good mood. He wasn’t nine hours ago, standing in his apartment arguing with Babs on the phone about holiday plans and her refusal to travel with them, but even if that’s still a sore spot in his day and a cut in his heart, he’s doing a lot better.

For one thing, he’s sitting on a couch in the Kent farmhouse living room under a blanket with his favorite baby brother. And the kid is just sitting there with him, letting it happen. They aren’t super close or cuddling, but Damian is only six inches away and under the same blanket while he plays a game on his phone.

Dick watches the character jump and spin in the endless runner game and occasionally comments or ribs the younger boy when the character explodes.

The fourth time it happens, Damian closes the game.

“I assume you were not successful in your dance party recruiting plans?” he asks with a small smirk.

“Bruce was…more reluctant than I anticipated,” Dick admits slowly. “He agreed on one condition.”

Damian’s eyes narrow at him. He pockets his phone before asking, “What condition?”

“That you agree to join us.”

Dick is not prepared for the suddenly gleeful grin that spreads across Damian’s face. He should have guessed, he supposes, that the kid would gloat.

“So we have you in stalemate,” Damian says, a little cheerfully. “I will not unless he agrees and he will not unless I agree.”

Jason picks that moment to walk through the living room toward the kitchen and Dick waves him to a stop. The young man slows and makes eye contact. Dick raises an eyebrow and nods his head just slightly toward Damian.

If the sudden grin that bloomed on Damian’s face had surprised him, the wicked one on Jason’s right now should scare him. But he knows Jason too well to be frightened by it.

The young man saunters over to the couch and drops heavily onto it on the other side of Damian.

“Share,” he demands without bothering to be polite about it, tugging on the blanket.

Damian grumbles and gets his phone back out.

Jason meets Dick’s eyes again and Dick nods.

It is probably a sign of something unhealthy that _this_ is the thing they can effortlessly communicate about. Dick has no doubt Jason has known all along precisely what he means.

In sync, they pull up the blanket over Damian’s head and hold it down tightly. Before he can do much more than begin to push against it with an angry, annoyed whine, Dick farts.

Jason does too, right on cue.

“God, Jay,” is the first thing Dick can say when the smell hits him and he’s not even under the blanket.

Damian is now fighting in earnest but his brothers are strong. They are also, briefly, merciless.

It is Dick who relents first and he knows it and isn’t ashamed; he stops holding his side down and Jason follows suit. The blanket flies away from Damian’s head. Damian gulps in air, red-faced and too shaken to leap up.

“What,” he demands, “was _that_?”

Jason tousles the boy’s hair and stands up.

“That was a rite of passage, Demonbird.”

“I’m going to take a shower. You are both disgusting,” Damian says, pushing himself up off the couch and untangling his legs from the blanket.

But Dick is laughing harder than he has in days and even though Jason stood up and sounded composed, he’s slumping back down now against the couch and wiping his eyes. Damian stands with his hands clenched trying to muster a scowl but it keeps edging closer to a small, if frustrated, smile.

“What is the likelihood,” Damian asks slowly, not making any move to go shower, “that we could do this to Drake?”

Dick feels like his heart is going to burst with pride. Before he can even answer, Jason, slouched back against the couch, shouts,

“Tim! C’mere, we gotta show you something.”

Tim’s footsteps are hurried on the stairs and he comes around the corner and stops. Conner Kent is right behind him, peering over Tim’s head and around the corner.

Damian has rejoined Dick and Jason on the couch with the blanket and they’ve left a space for Tim. Jason motions to it and Dick doesn’t even bother trying to hide his face-splitting grin.

“What?” Tim asks suspiciously.

“Trouble,” Conner assesses from behind him.

“Don’t do anything they say!” Clark booms from somewhere across the house and _that_ , despite his mirth, does make Dick flush red. He can feel it creep up his neck. He should have guessed that in the Kent’s own house, Clark would be keeping a close ear on everything.

“Join us,” Jason orders, with another broad gesture. His arms are still wrapped, Dick notices with a slight pang in his chest, but he wonders if it’s more to hide the healing wounds rather than to protect them.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Tim says simply, unmoving.

“Timmy,” Dick pleads, ignoring his own reservations about Clark overhearing and glancing at the tight little expression of gleeful anticipation on Damian’s face. “Timbo. Timmy. Would any of us try to hurt you?”

“Two of you,” Tim says, “have tried to kill me. So yes.”

“That was the past,” Jason says casually, but Dick looks over and thinks he sees a hitch in Jason’s breathing, a tensing of his shoulders, and then it’s gone. The predatory lift of his eyebrows doesn’t change at all.

“Drake,” Damian says, “I have missed you. We have not spoken much since your arrival.”

Dick elbows Damian in the side. He wants this pretty badly but there are limits on emotional manipulation. But then he wonders, looking now from Damian to Tim, how much it might actually be true.

“Don’t do it,” Conner warns when Tim steps forward. “This is only gonna end in tears, dude.”

“I’m not going to _cry_ , Kon,” Tim says dismissively and with a deep sigh. He all but drags himself across the room and sits back stiffly against the couch and allows Jason to flip the blanket over his lap.

“This is stupid,” Conner says, stepping all the way into the room to glare at Dick and then Jason.

“This is a kamikaze mission,” Tim says, “but at least it’s for family.”

“So glum,” Jason says, sinking down and leaning his head against Tim’s. “Isn’t this fricking nice?”

“We just want some brother time,” Dick adds, leaning his own head against Damian’s. He can feel the resigned tension rolling off of Tim and it almost makes him feel bad. Almost.

But it’s been a shitty month and they all need a break from anything serious.

With just a glance over the younger boys’ heads, and the realization that Damian didn’t anticipate that he was going to be trapped beneath again as well, Dick and Jason flip the blanket up and noise tears through the living room.

There’s an outraged yell from Damian and a muffled shout from Tim that turns into gagging. Jason grunts and drops his side of the blanket to clutch his ribs and a second later Dick is laughing too hard to block the blow across his chest that Tim leans over Damian to land.

“You sick _freaks_ ,” Tim hisses, coughing. “I thought you were going to _tickle_ me, what’s _wrong_ with you? God, it’s like something crawled inside you and _died_.”

Tim looks too angry to process his own words but Dick freezes. Damian doesn’t seem to register them either, because his own fury has turned into helpless giggling at Tim’s shock. Dick watches carefully, humor wiped from his face, to see what Jason will do.

But Jason seems unbothered. He’s laughing and still holding his rib when he says, “Yeah, nerdbrain, I’ve been saving that one just for you.”

Conner Kent rolls his eyes so hard Dick both wonders if it’s a superpower and if he’s been taking lessons from Stephanie. Tim jumps off the couch and shudders.

“Love you, Timmy,” Jason crows, tipped over sideway on Damian, who grunts at being trapped but doesn’t push Jason off.

“Shut up,” Tim grumbles.

“I told you, dude,” Conner says and Tim throws his arms in the air.

“I was _trying to be a good brother_!” he exclaims, glaring back at Dick. “Jason and Damian I expected shit like this from, but _you_ , you traitor.”

Dick stutters a little, sensing that this maybe got way out of hand faster than it should have, and he’s fighting off feeling annoyed that Tim is taking it way too seriously and being unfair.

“We could get Steph or Cass?” Dick offers, hoping to rope Tim into conspiracy the way Damian was swayed.

“No!” Stephanie shouts from up the stairs. “Leave me and the Perfect Daughter out of this!”

“What’s happening to Cass?” Bruce asks, leaning into the room as he and Clark go toward the side door off the kitchen.

“I _knew_ you had a favorite!” Steph shouts down again. Her voice drops, but she’s indignant and loud enough that they can still clearly hear her. “I told you, Kara! Didn’t I _just_ say he did?”

“You’re mad at me but don’t resent Cass?” Bruce calls up the stairs. Dick is relieved to see him in a good mood, and Clark grinning broadly beside him, but Tim is still standing with a rigid spine and balled fists in the living room a few feet away.

“You don’t hate perfect!” Steph retorts. “Or it wouldn’t be perfect! I can resent you because you have flaws.”

It sounds like she’s just at the top of the stairs now and Dick guesses from Bruce’s expression that he’s actually looking at Steph’s face.

“Thanks,” Bruce says mildly. “I’m glad you noticed.”

“That’s what I’m here for,” Steph shoots back easily and lightly. She doesn’t sound mad.

“I’m sorry,” Alfred opens the side door and steps into the kitchen, a small wooden tray with coffee cups in his hands. “I heard my job might be in danger.”

“She’s more like an apprentice,” Kara chimes in and Alfred nods in acceptance. Dick’s grin is fully back now, regardless of Tim’s demeanor.

“Clark, let’s go. Before they start making a list,” Bruce says, turning from the stairs.

“Escapist!” Cass yells, the word clear and sharp. “Avoidant!”

“Where are you getting these?” Bruce turns, falsely savage. He’s looking back up the stairs and Damian and Jason are giggling next to Dick in the couch. “No more watching us play Scrabble,” Bruce says up the stairs. “You’re cut off.”

“Vengeful!” Damian shouts, and when Dick turns to him with his mouth hanging open, Damian’s eyes are gleaming.

“Obstinate,” Alfred adds calmly from out of sight in the kitchen.

Bruce looks stunned. Clark is laughing and claps a hand on his back.

“Clark,” Bruce says, in a flat voice. If Dick didn’t know any better, he’d think it was almost like pleading for Bruce.

“Distant,” Clark adds and Dick gulps in air like a drowning man. He suddenly can’t understand why they’ve never come to the Kent farm altogether before and exactly why Bruce would want to avoid it. His side hurts from holding in laughter.

Bruce’s face is open, exaggerated betrayal at Clark’s addition.

“Anyone else?” he asks dryly after a moment.

“Pessimistic,” Dick says, meeting Bruce’s eyes.

“Realist,” Bruce attempts to correct.

“ _Pessimistic_ ,” Dick repeats firmly.

When Bruce turns to look at Clark, the alien shrugs.

“Bossy!” Jason throws in. “Obsessive!”

“Are we talking about Bruce?” Martha asks, coming in the house through the same door Alfred used.

Bruce pales and Dick bites his lip to keep back the roar of laughter in his chest. The others aren’t faring as successfully even if they’re trying.

“I think you’re okay,” Tim says miserably when the noise is dying down.

“Thanks, Tim,” Bruce says, but it sounds a little hollow. “Want to walk?”

“I thought we were going–” Clark starts to say but Bruce cuts him off with a glance. “Well. We were anyway. Let me know when I’m forgiven.”

Dick thinks Clark doesn’t really sound very regretful.

“Yes,” Tim says, going out the house without slowing. Dick stands and stretches.

“Dance party,” he says, looking down at Damian, who is still close to giggling. “One hour. No excuses.”

And Damian nods.

The knotted crowd at the stairs has broken up, Clark in the kitchen with his mother and Alfred. Conner Kent looks once at the side door while Dick watches him, and then the boy turns and jogs up the stairs after the girls. Upstairs, Steph cheers and Cass shrieks and Kara is chanting something that sounds vaguely like a musical Dick might have seen once. He doesn’t even want to know.

With a pause to consider if he wants a jacket or not, Dick decides against it and goes out of the house after Bruce and Tim. He jogs to catch up with them on the gravel lane when he spots them ahead.

He falls into step next to them and nudges Tim, who is walking with his hands jammed in his pockets and his shoulders hunched forward.

“I’m sorry,” he says, dipping forward to try to catch Tim’s eye. “I should have warned you at least.”

“It’s fine,” Tim mutters, shrugging.

“What happened?” Bruce asks, his tone suddenly stern.

“Nothing,” Tim sighs.

“We dutch oven’ed Tim and Damian on the couch,” Dick admits sheepishly.

Bruce makes a noise that Dick thinks is supposed to be a cough but sounds suspiciously like a strangled chuckle. The man reaches out and gives the back of Tim’s neck a squeeze.

“At least you have brothers, Tim,” Bruce says.

“Yeah, thanks for that, by the way,” Tim says.

They walk in silence for a few moments, gravel crunching under their shoes, and then Dick ventures, “You aren’t really mad, are you, Tim?”

“Yes,” Tim says sharply. “I mean, no. Yes and no. Yes, but not about that. I’ll think it’s funny by tomorrow.”

“This is about the office,” Bruce says and it’s a statement, not a question.

Tim stops short and it takes Dick another stride to catch himself. Bruce is right next to Tim when he turns to look at them, his gaze flicking from one to the other. He wasn’t aware something else was going on between them, even with the plane ride. The situation with Babs must have been distracting him more than he thought.

“You had…you had no _right_ …” Tim stammers, and then he closes his eyes and starts over, his words clipped and clearly intentionally chosen. “You had no reason to exclude me from the research meetings.”

Bruce’s mouth twists, just slightly, into a mild grimace like he’s attempting to force his own response to be as even and clear. There is a long, heavy quiet. Dick wishes he’d stayed back at the farmhouse but then Bruce looks at him, something helpless and frustrated in his expression. It softens while he’s staring at Dick and Dick realizes he’s there as a moderator even without speaking.

“I thought you’d appreciate the time to focus on school or have a break,” Bruce says quietly and levelly.

“School is a joke right now,” Tim says, “if I wanted a break, I’d tell you.”

“Would you?” Bruce asks.

“I–” Tim throws back his shoulders and then exhales and slumps again, his foot kicking at gravel. “No. I wouldn’t.”

“I’m sorry,” Bruce says. “I should have asked. Do you need a break?”

“We’ve had a lot going on,” Dick says gently, hoping to encourage Tim to rest a bit if he needs it.

“Maybe,” Tim says glumly. Then some of the fire seeps back into him. “But not from _that_. It’s one thing I look forward to right now.”

“Alright,” Bruce nods decisively. “I’ll put you back on the memo and calendar list.”

“It’s that easy?” Tim asks suspiciously.

“It’s that easy,” Bruce confirms. “At least this time.”

“Okay,” Tim says, starting to walk again. “Thanks.”

After they go another fifty feet, Dick says, “So, that dance party…”

“Only if Damian agrees. That was the deal,” Bruce says.

“Damian,” Dick says, pausing for emphasis, “agreed.”

“Damn it,” Bruce says under his breath. “This is why we don’t do Thanksgiving.”

And Dick happily and easily ignores Bruce’s grumbling as they walk, and Tim is seeming more at ease with every step.

“This,” Dick says, hugging Tim around the shoulders, and the younger boy leans into it some, “is _exactly_ why we do Thanksgiving.”


	10. In Which We Consider the Future

It is three in the morning when Bruce wakes up on the floor of the guest room and untangles himself from the sleeping bag. He is asleep one moment and fully awake the next, but it takes a second to remember he is at the Kent’s farmhouse, spending the night after Thanksgiving dinner. He glances at the bed where Damian and Jason should be sleeping, but only Damian is there, flat on his back and softly snoring.

Bruce climbs to his feet and goes to the window while pulling a sweater over his head. Outside, below, on the deck, he can see Jason sitting at the glass patio table in his coat and hat, smoking in the yellow light of the old outdoor bulb by the door.

There’s a duffel at the foot of the bed, and he digs through it and finds socks, slips them on while balanced on one foot at a time. He looks once more at Damian to make sure the boy is still asleep, then slips out of the room and down the stairs. He skips the fourth step, the one that creaks.

He finds his coat in a pile behind a chair in the living room and is still buttoning it when he steps out into the icy chill of the night air. A northern wind blew in with the rising moon and chased all the unusual warmth of the day before away.

Jason turns, a little startled, but relaxes when he sees him.

Bruce takes the seat next to Jason and they sit in the silence together for several minutes, and Bruce would actually feel like it was comfortable silence if weren’t for the anxious hunch of Jason’s shoulders, the tension rolling off the boy.

He could ask directly. But depending on what’s wrong, Jason could just shut down.

“It was busy today,” Bruce settles on observing, feeling a bit like a coward. “I didn’t get to see much of you.”

“Yeah,” Jason agrees, taking a long draw on his cigarette. Bruce notices that the boy’s fingers, the ones pinching the cigarette and not in his coat pocket, are trembling.

Bruce’s heart stutters. There was always a chance it could come to this, when Jason blamed him for what he’d gone through not once, but twice.

“How’ve you been?” Bruce asks, hearing the stiffness in his own voice. “What did Dev say about your arms?”

“That I need to fricking take it easy, whatever the fuck that means,” Jason says, blowing a cloud of smoke and hot breath into the air. Bruce’s own intentionally even exhalations generate their own small wisps of steam.

“I was avoiding you,” Jason says bluntly after another second. He won’t look over at Bruce.

Bruce’s heart isn’t stuttering, it’s shot through. It’s sunk to the bottom of him. And he can’t even blame him.

“We can make things easy for you, then,” Bruce says firmly, choosing to focus on what he can do something about. “And I can help you find things to do so you aren’t going stir-crazy at the Manor.”

There’s a long and stiff silence after this.

“I’m not going back with you,” Jason says quietly, chain-lighting another cigarette he’s shaken out of the carton in his coat pocket.

Bruce is too stunned to speak, partly because it makes perfect sense and partly because he feels wrenched to pieces inside. Even with the relative silence of the past two weeks, where he’d mostly left Jason alone on purpose, to give him time at the farm, he’d thought they were doing well before Zsasz. He’d been cautiously hoping they’d have a chance of maintaining that.

In reaction to Bruce’s silence, Jason hunches his shoulders even more. Or maybe it’s just the cold.

“Where will you go?” Bruce manages to ask, cursing himself immediately afterward for how stiff and angry he knows he must sound. He has no right to be angry here; he isn’t angry. But he knows from experience now how his stress is often interpreted, how frequently his own flaws in conversation stab him in the back. He should work on this, practice somehow, treat it like a martial skill or physical challenge. His mouth is so dry.

“I’m staying here,” Jason says, flicking ash off the cigarette butt into the ashtray on the table. In all his years of coming to the Kent Farm, Bruce has never noticed ashtrays around before.

“I’m staying here,” Jason says again, “and I’m going to Wichita State after the new year.”

And Jason finally, _finally_ looks over at him. Bruce has had his eyes on the boy the whole time, staring at him, not wanting to miss even a flicker of contact. So when Jason does look, Bruce sees that his features aren’t bent with fury or resentment-- his eyes are clouded with fear.

Bruce sighs in relief, leaning forward in the seat out of the rigid, braced posture he’s maintained since sensing Jason’s mood.

“Damn it, Jay,” he exhales. “That’s great news.”

Jason starts. He looks away and sucks on the cigarette before looking back.

“I thought you’d be pissed,” Jason says.

“Why?” Bruce asks honestly, a little surprised.

Something in Jason’s face shifts, and before he looks away Bruce registers it as hurt.

“Figures,” Jason mutters.

And now Bruce is starting to actually feel angry, stinging from emotional whiplash. It’s like he can’t say anything right, like those first months Jason was back when it was more important than ever to figure out the right thing to say.

“What figures?” he asks sharply.

“That you’d be relieved,” Jason spits out. “That you don’t have to deal with me epicly making a hot clustercuss out of things again.”

Bruce puts his head in his hands. He feels like it’s the only valid response at this point, because this is starting to feel like a minefield.

“What happened with Zsasz,” he says, sitting back up, “that was–”

“Stupid, I know,” Jason interrupts. “A fucking disaster. I did everything you’d ever taught us not to do and-”

“Jay.”

“-I put us all in danger. I nearly cost Dev his fricking hands. I risked our identities and-”

“Jay.”

“-I worried the hell out of you and Alfred and I wasted all that-”

“ _Jason_.”

Jason stops talking and his tapping foot stops moving.

“Jason,” Bruce says again, regarding the nervous boy, “if I blame anyone for what happened, it’s myself. I’m just glad you’re alive. If you stay here, I’m going to miss the hell out of you, but I want you to be okay. Is this what you want? Or are you still avoiding me?”

He watches the transition on Jason’s face and in his posture, over three long drawls on the cigarette and the exhalations that follow. He goes from guarded and miserable to something close to relaxed.

“Yeah,” Jason says, staring at the table like he’s seeing something else. “I really want this.”

He looks up at Bruce.

“I don’t want to go back to Gotham right now. And Martha said I could stay with them if I go to school. I’ll figure out something, pay them rent. I’ll help with the farm when I can.”

“Don’t worry about the money,” Bruce says, leaning back in the chair now. “I’ll take care of it.”

“You don’t have to-”

“There were a lot of years where I didn’t get to take care of you, Jay,” Bruce says, looking levelly at him. “Let me start to make it up to you. Just this year at least.”

“Okay,” Jason says, looking at him for a long time before nodding once. “Okay.”

“Do you know what you want to study?” Bruce asks, crossing his arms now against the cold.

Jason’s cheeks are red from the wind but Bruce doesn’t miss the slight blush that creeps up the boy’s face before he ducks his head away.

“It’s fricking idiotic,” Jason says. “I’ll probably hate it. It’s a waste of time.”

“I’ll fund anything except journalism,” Bruce says, hoping he’s not turning the conversation back to explosion. “Because you can already write and Clark would never let me live it down.”

Jason laughs and puffs on the cigarette.

“Close enough,” he mumbles. “Dramatic literature. It’s new. Just English and Theater minors combined, really. I’m probably going to hate it.”

“Jay,” Bruce says, looking at his boy. He’d told Dev just twelve hours ago he was happy and didn’t know what to do with it, but he’d been wrong-- that’s how he feels _now_.

“I know, it’s a throwaway major,” Jason says. “Starving artist.”

“I think it’s perfect for you,” Bruce says earnestly. “Jay, don’t feel bad about that. You’re allowed to enjoy things, to be excited. Why do you think I even started what I do? I want you and the others to have the chance at a life, a real life.”

Jason nods, his head bent down. He sniffles.

Bruce reaches over and puts a hand on his shoulder, gives it a gentle squeeze.

“I’m going to miss you. But I’m glad it’s for this. And the Kents will take good care of you.”

Jason nods again and then sits up and leans back, their arms close in the side-by-side chairs.

“Yeah,” he says. “They will. I’m gonna miss you, too, Dad. But I’ll come visit when I’m ready.”

“I’ll come visit you until you are,” Bruce says, trying to stay calm. His heart always thuds like a locomotive when Jay just tosses it out there like that, this acknowledgment of their relationship.

“Let me try that,” Bruce says a second later, holding his hand out for the cigarette. Jason looks at him and then at the cigarette, then shrugs and hands it over.

Bruce grinds it out in the ashtray.

“You asshole,” Jason laughs, rubbing his lip where the cigarette had been dangling a moment before. Bruce grins at him. Jason scuffs his shoe on the decking and sighs.

“Dick and I will drive down whatever you need,” Bruce says. “Just give me a list.”

“What makes you think I’m a good writer?” Jason asks in return, as if he didn’t hear.

Bruce pulls his hands out of his pockets to breathe on them. The cold is so much more brutal without the suit. He looks across the dark fields, empty and trampled.

“I told you a year ago, Jay. You’re pure poetry. And Alfred saved all your school essays.”

“Shiitake mushrooms,” Jason mutters. “I was a kid.”

“So I assume you’ve only improved,” Bruce says. “And they were already good.”

Jason grins at the table and bites his lip.

“Just let me know what you need,” Bruce says again. “I’ll make another trip.”

“Thank you,” Jason says, hunching his shoulders forward again.

There’s a noise from inside the house and they both turn.

“It’s Martha,” Jason says. “She gets up at four-thirty. She’ll make coffee and then go back to her room to read.”

“I wonder what she reads,” Bruce muses, looking at the door.

“The Bible, I think,” Jason says, standing and stamping his feet. “I’m fucking frozen. I can’t feel my toes.”

“Hn,” Bruce says, still looking toward the farmhouse. He looks over at Jason and stands up with him. “Let’s go in.”

Once inside, Jason takes his coat off and as soon as he does, Bruce puts a hand on the small of his back right under the hem of his shirt. Jason yelps and pulls away. Bruce smirks at him.

“Your hands are like ice,” Jason grumbles.

“Shhh,” Martha hisses from the kitchen. “You two quit horseplayin’ while everyone sleeps.”

“It wasn’t me!” Jason protests in a whisper, stepping ahead into the kitchen.

“Do you want some coffee?” Martha asks when Bruce follows him.

“Please,” Bruce says.

Jason nods and takes a banana from a bowl on the counter.

There are rapid footsteps on the stairs and Dev comes around the corner to stand at the edge of the kitchen, bleary-eyed.

“I heard a shout,” he says.

“It was nothing,” Bruce says.

“Bloody hell, this family,” he mutters and turns back to climb up the stairs.

Martha swats at Bruce’s arm and scolds him, “You woke that poor man up.”

Bruce catches Jason’s eye and the boy is laughing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Due to some other projects I have going on, this is either going to be getting much slower updates or I might wrap it up in a chapter or two. Do you guys have a preference? Long gaps between updates or a resolved, but shorter, story? I'm curious about which would be better received. I will keep writing and posting Batfam shorts while working on other projects, but I don't think I'd do the story justice if I tried to keep up with it while my attention is so divided. Thank you ALL for reading! 
> 
> (And when I say "slower updates" I mean like, a week, every other week-ish, and not a year from now, haha.)


	11. In Which We Need One Another

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please read the note at the end. :)

Three days after Thanksgiving, Jason is glad that he stayed with the Kents and he also already misses Damian. Even if the kid is a little shit, he was nice to have around, even if Jason is reluctant to admit it out loud to anyone.

It’s not lonely, exactly, just quieter than he’s been used to. And considering the fact that, visits to the Manor aside, he’s lived alone for a few years, it’s sort of a startling thing to miss. And he misses all of them, especially Dick.

Especially Steph.

Especially Dev.

Especially Tim.

Especially Cass.

Especially Alfred.

Especially Bruce.

Fricking fuck.

Damian helped suspend the homesickness, and he thought in the mess of Thanksgiving that he’d be relieved when they all left again. Only three weeks, give or take a few days, and he’s come to love the quiet companionship of the Kents.

But he’s not relieved. The idea of returning to Gotham right now makes his stomach flip-flop in fear–and internally he’s willing to admit that this is _exactly_ what it is-- but he’s homesick for people.

He has thought, really, that he hadn’t changed much the past few years except for his relationship with Bruce. It’s only the past few weeks that he’s realized how much he’s come to depend on all of them, and it’s not even going back to how it used to be, before the first time he died. It’s something entirely new.

Because before, it was mostly just him and Bruce, anyway. Dick was there but not really involved in his life that much. And the others weren’t around at all. It used to drive him up a wall, thinking about how much he’d missed in that time in-between death and return, but now it’s shifted to a kind of dull ache, mixed with a weird appreciation for that time it was just them.

It wasn’t until that month with the tumor, when he started being _there_ again, that it really hit him that he was the second oldest. He had known a Bruce that was more openly happy, easier-going, more willing to joke around or relax. For Bruce, anyway.

When he’d first come back, he’d made the mistake for weeks of thinking that new hardness, the darker cynicism and bitter edge, was reserved for him, that it was reaction somehow to his return. It took a while to find out that it was just the kind of man Bruce had become.

And really, that was kind of fucking reassuring? It wasn’t at first, but there was a dark and angry part of him, a wounded and fragile part of him, that was glad for the evidence of Bruce’s suffering as a reaction to his first death.

But he’d still avoided him, still knew his barely-checked violent temper and ethical code, his justifications for lethal force and his raging mood swings, were all things that wounded them both when they were anything approaching close.

Jason knew, he knew, he was floundering, that he was using the weight of a history of literature and art like a weapon to bolster his own incredibly broken actions. But he hadn’t known it at the time. At the time, it had made perfect sense.

It not making the same kind of sense to Bruce had incredibly pissed him off. So they’d danced around their anger and their heartbreak for endless months, Bruce unable to tell him to get out and Jason unable to leave.

Then he’d gotten a tumor and in retrospect, Jason had never been so grateful for a serious illness ever in his three lives. Because the panic of _I can’t lose you, I’ve barely found you_ drove him into stasis and he’d stopped running. And something about Bruce needing _him_ was the thing that held him.

While Bruce started to make sense to him again, he’d started to make sense of himself-- every step was a step away from the chaos of his inner self after the Pit. Coming back to life and wandering cold and hungry and lost was one thing, but that fucking Pit…that had _wrecked_ him.

There had been those terrifying several weeks where he thought it was gone, all over, when Bruce shut down and then exploded. When Steph had angrily muttered, _“This is just like him,”_ and Jason had comprehended what a different Bruce he’d known.

When he found himself defending Bruce to her, siding with Cass, bolstered by Martha Kent’s blunt explanation to Damian, something shifted in him again. He felt like he didn’t need Bruce’s feedback to change for the better and then he understood, more than ever, something he’d missed over and over.

It dawned on him with the slow steadiness of a sunrise, that Bruce wasn’t a wise old man withholding lessons until he deemed Jason ready. Bruce was a man who was fundamentally _broken_ in ways like Jason was broken, that he was a mix of wisdom from paths he’d already navigated and foolish in regions where the map had been burned away or lost. And for all his derisive and dismissive language and attitude, Jason’s begrudging respect had hidden this from him. A lot of his current anger was, after all, rooted in the conviction that Bruce was intentionally refusing to acknowledge things instead of just maybe _not getting them_ in the same way Jason was finding he didn’t get some things.

So when Cass had come to him after their minor fight with Steph, in tears and mostly incoherent, her language rendered nearly mute by her distress, insisting that something was _wrong_ and they needed to do something, he had agreed. He had agreed not out of a desire to re-secure Bruce’s favor, but to help his dad. And that made a world of difference.

He had been smoking on his deck, wearing a coat and a wool knit cap a neighbor lady had made for him, trying to decide if he should try calling or just show up, when his phone had buzzed.

_come get me I need to talk to u_

From Bruce, of course. Without any punctuation, which meant he’d typed it blind without his glasses and hadn’t bothered to read it over. The only capitalization was the pronoun that autocorrect changed for him.

Jason had still been staring at it when the next message came through.

_please and I’m sorry_

Jason had hastily sent back, _be right there_.

It didn’t matter that it was frigid January; Jason had sprinted for his bike and sped the whole way there.

To this day, he doesn’t know why he’d texted when his bike had skidded to a stop in the gravel outside the manor, except that he was a little panicky and not thinking clearly and wasn’t entirely sure why he had suddenly felt everything as incredibly urgent.

A minute later, Bruce had come out of the Manor without a coat or hat or anything, Dev and Tim on the steps behind him watching him go. Tim hadn’t been much of a surprise, but Dev, who was practically a stranger to Jason at that point, had.

Jason had wordlessly given Bruce a helmet and off they’d gone, Bruce’s arms wrapped around his waist and clinging like he was drowning instead of just a freezing man on the back of a motorcycle.

Without planning or deciding, Jason had taken him to Jason’s own apartment and they’d gone up to find it cold. Jason had left the balcony door open.

He had closed it first, then turned to see Bruce standing in his living room in a way Jason never wanted to see again. Something about the droop of his shoulders, the way his head was hanging. It was a knife in Jason’s heart and he’d found a blanket to wrap around him.

Bruce was frigid from the ride, shaking before Jason made him sit on the couch, and the first thing he actually spoke to him was just, “God, Jay, I’m so sorry.”

Then he’d started crying. Not just crying, like actually fucking sobbing on Jason’s couch, like he couldn’t get away from whatever was inside him.

And for a minute, Jason had frozen like a deer in headlights because he was freaking out, completely freaking out, not because he didn’t know what was going on but because he knew _exactly_ what that felt like and didn’t know how to stop it from happening.

So he’d just hugged him and they sat that way on the couch for probably half an hour until Jason’s arm was falling asleep and Bruce sat up, the blanket still wrapped around his shoulders, and apologized again while glaring at the floor.

Jason had warmed up a can of soup and put it in mugs and they’d sat on the couch together and Bruce had started asking him questions, questions he’d never tried to ask before, about the Lazarus Pit and Talia and his first months back in Gotham and the time _before_ the Lazarus Pit but after he’d died and Jason had answered everything. Bruce’s questions seemed tentative and Jason answered them gently, honestly but trying to keep his automatic anger out of his voice.

They’d sat with their shoulders touching and warm mugs in their hands and by the end, Bruce wasn’t the only one who had been crying. And Bruce seemed like he might break again at any second, which scared Jason but he also understood.

After a bit, Jason had gotten a book from one of his shelves and started reading without even asking. Bruce had taken a deep breath and leaned against his shoulder, still wrapped in the blanket, curled up almost like a child.

Martha Kent had been right.

It was no coincidence that it was Martha Kent’s son who had come for Bruce a few hours later.

And it was why, when in those evening hours the day after Zsasz murdered him Bruce had asked, “Is there anywhere you want to go? Do you want to get out of here when you’re on your feet?” Jason’s mind had gone directly to Martha Kent. In the haze of pain and drugs, he thought if anyone could help make sense of the mess he knew he’d be as soon as he was awake enough to feel it, it would be her. She’d see straight through his defensive bullshit and not be an asshole about it.

And she has.

Jason, if he’s honest, adores her.

He just also, in the gaping hole of their absence after Thanksgiving, misses his family. He feels like finally establishing something healthy with Bruce gave him the freedom to really let his guard down with the rest of them, to actually start regarding them as siblings and treating them that way. And he thinks what he has with Bruce is better, is good, even if it still has its rough patches-- after all, he’s still Jason and Bruce is still Bruce. But they’re patches instead of festering wounds.

Even though he really, _really_ doesn’t want to go back to Gotham right now, he’s already starting to wonder if he can actually do this, stick out months here for school. He decides on the spot that he’s going home for Christmas and New Year’s, somehow.

For now, he’ll grit his teeth and chalk it up to post-holiday blues (which are a thing, he thinks, if British novels haven’t lied to him), the fact that his arms are still healing, and general tiredness.

He’s been lying on his bed for an hour not really doing anything and is contemplating going outside to smoke. He’s just staring at the tiny pink roses on the curling faded green vines of the wallpaper up and down the wall across from his head, which is hanging back off the bed, thinking about Gotham and family and what it would be like to be tiny enough to climb the vines up toward the popcorn ceiling and disappear into the sharp white peaks like mountains.

Right as he’s leaning toward getting up and going out to the deck, bundled in a coat and hat, his phone rings and he sits up to grab it off the little desk in the corner where it’s plugged in to charge.

It’s Bruce.

“Hey, you big boob,” Jason answers the phone.

“I haven’t heard that one for a while,” Bruce replies dryly.

“What’s wrong?” Jason asks next, casually, because they’re mostly getting along but he’s not an idiot. He knows Bruce.

There’s a long silence and dread seeps into Jason’s gut. He hasn’t heard anything from the others in a few hours, which isn’t unusual, but now seems ominous.

“Nothing’s wrong,” Bruce says finally. “I wanted to talk. I didn’t call before Thanksgiving but if you’re staying longer, I don’t want to stop talking to you. Is this a good time?”

“Just chatting? Aw, B. How long did Alfred set the timer for? Did he threaten to burn dinner?” Jason is going for easy-going teasing but he might sound bitter and he would swear it was unintentional but the words are out there in the air before he can think them through. He squeezes his eyes shut in a grimace of regret.

“Jay,” Bruce says, and his voice is tight. It’s bordering more on pleading than angry, though. “I’m trying. Work with me.”

Jason’s breath catches because he believes him and it startles him how much it suddenly matters.

“Me, too,” he says. “Okay.”

They only stay on the phone for about fifteen minutes, but for right now, while Jason himself is unsure of what he needs or wants or what gauntlet of memory or emotion he’ll have to run tonight, tomorrow, the coming week just to cope and be alive and awake, fifteen minutes is like a step out of the mire.  
  
It's a phone call ended with a breath, a hesitation, a silence, and, "I love you, Jason."  
  
It's another silence, a quiet consideration, and rushing words before the line goes dead, "I love you, too, Dad."

It’s progress.

It’s hope.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you ALL for reading and commenting. Expect an epilogue soon and possibly some related shorts, but it is with a lot of consideration that I've decided to quietly and gently end this story. My mind and heart want to move on to other things and while I've loved this story line and am reluctant to leave it, I also don't want it to drag on without resolution. I will be posting an epilogue tying some other loose ends up, and anything that doesn't resolve for you, I am happy to answer in comments from my notes. It has been such an honor and a gift to get to share this with all of you and interact with you. Please rest assured that I'm not done writing, not by any means, and already have a few shorts/longer pieces in the works.
> 
> One fairly major reason for wanting to wrap up Cor Et Cerebrum is that I am currently in the process, with a cowriter, of moving Kiran Devabhaktuni to completely original fiction. I will announce on tumblr and via a chapter update when the Dev stuff here is going to be removed from the site so you can download it if you wish, but I'm really hoping that we can pull it off well and you can find Dev in his own little world sometime very soon! I didn't start writing Batfam fanfic again expecting to find Dev, but I did, and I'm reluctant to just leave him there. 
> 
> So, keep your eyes open for announcements about that if it interests you, and please keep checking here for other Batman stories! They've not escaped my keyboard quite yet. :)


	12. In Which We Leave the Farm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, this is an epilogue for the story. There will be a complete Cor Et Cerebrum epilogue finishing up all the character development you've worked through with me on this series; it will be posted as a standalone with all the other shorts. Thank you SO MUCH for reading and loving these characters alongside me.

A tense silence fills the Jeep as it tears down I-70. They have four hundred miles to go on this road alone, much less the approximately nine hundred miles after that. They have hours and hours of driving ahead of them and Bruce doesn’t want to spend it not talking.

The problem is that he’s pretty good at not talking.

They can talk-- they _have_ been talking, on the phone at least once a week. But it’s been twenty-four days since the Joker and Zsasz died and they’re on the way cross-country to a surgeon in Montana and the stress is radiating off Jason in waves so thick and hard that Bruce is slightly worried the boy will throw open the car door and literally run if they have to slow down for anything.

If Dick were here, he’d know what to say. Or he’d be so good-natured about trying that it would smooth things over.

But Bruce is acutely aware of his own failings in communication, maybe more these past few years than ever. And as his own stress levels rise in reaction to Jason’s, he feels his words slipping further and further away from him until his fingers are a vice around the steering wheel.

Get Jason to Montana with both of them in one piece. That’s the goal.

Bruce wants more than just the bare minimum but sometimes the minimum is the best target.

In one of those grand internal paradoxes, he both entirely understands his kids’ need for words and is blindsided by it every single time. He knows he hyper focuses, he knows he often says things in a way that isolates or distances-- but knowing this doesn’t fix it. And in the moment, he knows he still misses so much when he’s communicating information. It used to make him angry, this disconnect between relevance and feeling. But now it’s just another reminder of the ways in which he is internally crippled.

 _I don’t know how to talk to them about it,_ he’d told Martha Kent once.

 _But they need you to,_ she had answered.

And he’s glad to be on good terms with Babs again because he needs it, he needs her interpretations and reminders that _how_ he communicates matters just as much as _what_ he communicates, and she’s developed a straightforward and sterile way of telling him and keeping him in line that he can take. And he _does_ need it.

It wasn’t always that way.

The normal trajectory of memory is that the older one gets, the things furthest from the current point in time are the first to fade. But he isn’t normal and it’s not true for him-- preparatory school and college are a blur now, some of those first months with Dick have merged into a composite, but those memories of his early childhood have become sharper and more pronounced with age.

 _Did you know memories gain permanence the more often you recall them?_ Dev had asked him just a week ago, while Bruce had been mercilessly butchering him over a game of chess.

 _Yes_ , Bruce had answered, because he did know. It was readily available research.

 _The problem is that they’re rewritten as new memories every time and any bloody error in memory is recorded as the strongest iteration, so your most vivid memories might be the most faulty. It’s sodding mental,_ Dev had continued. _The most accurate ones are the ones you don’t think of often._

Bruce hadn’t wanted to think about this. He still doesn’t want to, really.

 _Sorry, I’ve just been thinking about my mum,_ Dev had said, while Bruce captured his remaining rook.

Bruce doesn’t want to think about it because his only connection to his parents for over thirty years now has been through memory and they _are_ some of his most vivid ones, memories he’s accessed thousands of times. And the possibility that he has misremembered, rewritten an ideal over their reality, is so horrific to him that even with his usually realist leanings he cannot dwell on it.

And what he remembers is talking. He remembers following his mother when he was only tall enough to see the hem of her mid-length skirt at eye-level, holding the pieces of a dissected wristwatch in his hands and asking, _Why is this here, what does this do, why is it this color, what is it made of, who made this, what did they use?_ He remembers her laughter and the way she never was exasperated the way his father would be after the first two or three questions.

 _Let’s look it up,_ she would say if she didn’t know. _Let’s ask Alfred,_ who then seemed like an endless fount of knowledge, like a household encyclopedia, a reference for when they couldn’t find answers in the pages of the brown bound and numbered volumes or didn’t feel like the trek to the library.

He remembers her talking about the smell of roses, making up stories about the life of the mink whose fur she wore around her neck in the winter. He remembers asking about swimming pool safety, about whether you could stand on Jupiter, about a joke that went over his head at a party, about a picture he had seen of a Holocaust victim. Nothing was off-limits to him and she never dismissed his questions.

When he gave his opinion on her necklace, a lunch, a politician’s speech, a news report, the importance of space exploration, she listened and considered it with the same gravity she gave to his father’s words.

He thinks some days he remembers every single thing he ever said to her and she to him, though he realizes this must be an impossibility.

And he remembers the last night they spoke anything to each other, but one of his deepest griefs is that he never has been able to remember what she said. He thinks it should be etched firmly into his memory, more than the mundane questions about the composition of clouds or whether Mozart had a dog or how blood types were distinguished.

But when his parents died in that dark alleyway, he thinks his language died with it. He doesn’t remember what, if anything, any police officer said to him that night. He remembers the visuals but not the words.

Bruce knows he’s not as bereft as Cass was; he still _thought_ in language, he could still manage sentences of structure with proper form and vocabulary. But what had once poured out of him without effort became a mountain at the edge of a desert valley he was lost in.

He can count on his fingers the number of things he said to Alfred in that first month after. And the older man, already tending toward reserved silence, had not pressed. It wasn’t until much later that Bruce had realized the older man’s reticence wasn’t neglect or carelessness, but the mutual muteness of his own grief at the loss of what were certainly at that point his best friends.

In his silence, he felt like all his speech and questions and desire to understand the world had died with the one who had always answered him. It was months before he even wanted to ask anything again, and when it crept back into his life and out of his grief, this thirst to _know_ , it did not bring his old ease of speech along. For the first time in his remembered life, his hunger for information was hampered by his struggle with the words he needed.

He had only been a child, but he had never told anyone how difficult it was to just ask something. To comment on anything. To respond to questions. So his silence became a part of him as much as their deaths had and his interactions with the verbal world were the result of intentional rehearsal and planning. He often heard himself spoken of as _that aloof Wayne boy_ , _that poor quiet thing._

By the time he reached college, language had become a function of necessity rather than nature. Like any foreign tongue, he became more fluent with usage and immersion, and knew how to navigate different expectations. He even enjoyed it again, sometimes, but it was a guarded enjoyment of something he knew he could lose again and didn’t want to grow too dependent upon.

And somewhere along the way, he realized he wasn’t catching nuance in the way others spoke, outside of his familiarity with Alfred’s mannerisms and sarcasms and sincerity, so precision became crucial to him. He moved most easily in concrete terms, in the accurate transmission of data. It made sense to him when he struggled to make sense of himself.

Because he still wasn’t certain he _was_ understood, could make himself understood the way he wanted to be. He could chat and flirt and small talk and lead board meetings, but that was more the result of the study of human nature and body language, of learning what to say to achieve a result and it was always too false to apply to his family, to his own desire to genuinely connect.

He thinks sometimes it’s why he started learning foreign languages, to test each possible variation and see if there was one in which he could find natural expression again. Maybe the remembered ease was a product of childhood, but he suspects it’s a mix. Still, he never has found anything that’s come close.

But knowing his flaws are rooted in trauma and actually changing how his brain functions are two vastly different things. It is a disassociation that gives him the means to look back and explain himself in retrospect, but once situations have escalated because of his own failures to handle them well, he feels those explanations are often unwelcome and pointless. The damage has already been done.

Still, he has improved, like any skill. It’s not always a struggle. And he’s had good teachers along the way, even if they didn’t realize it-- Dick and all the emotion he managed with words, Jason and his profane and then tempered eloquence.

Cassandra he understands so easily and readily that it had startled him at first, how alike they are. He can see himself in each of the boys and some of each of the boys in him, but Cassandra is…Cass is the closest he’s ever come to seeing and knowing himself reflected in another. But she’s a child and a daughter and he has certain responsibilities and burdens that are not yet hers to bear.

It is no small wonder then that his closest friends over the years have been those who are comfortable with silence, unthreatened by the absence of speech. He _likes_ talking to them but it does not frighten or worry Clark or Alfred or Selina when he lapses into silence, into the language of motion or stillness. When he is stressed or struggling, they have the ability to let him mull or brood or sort his thoughts without demands.

But the kids _need_ more than that, more than his sparsely delivered instructions and stony quiets, and when he is most troubled or distracted he often doesn’t see it or remember it until long after. Sometimes, he sees it in the moment but it is the times of greatest stress in which his words, beyond the most basic or functional, slip away from him again.

When Jason died, he lost years of progress-- poor, long-suffering Alfred waited almost two weeks for him to manage more than a brief recitation of the barest facts surrounding the boy’s murder. It wasn’t that the words weren’t there; he has a head full of hundreds of thousands of words in over a dozen languages by now. It was just that he couldn’t force them into the leap from his brain to his lips and on some level, he didn’t want to.

He built himself back up again but he still always struggles with tension, with stress. It is not fear that stays his tongue, it is something mechanical, some process that shuts down and restarts only with effort. The problem is often that he doesn’t even realized it’s happened until well after it has. And that’s usually after he’s already hurt someone or pushed them away with his brevity, his brief and cold words. It’s not an excuse, just a reason, a dissection of why he should apologize and then even that is hard because he’s also, if he’s honest, pretty prideful. And he worked like hell to make himself who he is, a sharp and unrelenting human weapon, so he feels he has a right to be a little proud.

But it kills him in the times when he wants– _needs_ – to connect or engage. With Dick, with Jason, with Babs, with Lesley. His mission has been to save or protect Gotham for so long that it seems stupid how bad he can be at rebuilding or repairing things. And then he gets frustrated and angry with himself and the kids read it right off his face and his body, like he _taught_ them to read people, and jump to conclusions and it all goes to shit and he’s left with the aftershocks of his firm opinions and inflexible rules and desire to reach them and attempts to retain some semblance of understanding.

It is times like those that he most misses her.

It is times like _these_ that he most misses her, when an old foe is vanquished and his boy is terrified of surgery and he doesn’t know if he should be happy or heartbroken or somewhere in between, when he is always, always bittersweet or broken and he just wants to ask her, she who never made him feel despised or misunderstood or small even when he was six years old,

_How the hell do I do this? How do I talk to my son?_

And it is a further bittersweet to know he _ought_ to know better than she. She, who had all that patience wrapped up in thirty-two years of life, he who has eight years and three months beyond what she ever had. He _should_ be better at this by now, but he’s spent over thirty years trying to resurrect his words and they’re still stiff and dead things when he most needs them.

So it makes perfect sense and is fitting and stinging all the same when it is Jason who breaks the silence.

The kids-- all of them, even Cass-- are good at being the first to speak, when they tire of waiting for him.

“So, are we just gonna glare at the fucking road for seventeen hours? ‘Cause I’ve got some music I could play or you can just ignore me, that’s goddamn fine, too.”

“Sorry,” Bruce says quietly, “I was just thinking.”

“About how to tear off the steering wheel in a fit of rage? Because I want out of the fricking car first,” Jason quips.

Bruce glances over at him. The interstate is clear and he can spare a good look. And it strikes him, a blow that shatters his own inner turmoil, how hard Jason is trying and how proud he is of him.

Because there was such a gap, it is hard sometimes not to still think of him as a kid, as a smart and brash young teenager. But the boy sitting next to him in the Jeep with his arm in a sling is a man, a man almost twenty-one, a man he’s been talking to on the phone and emailing and building relationship with for years now. And it reminds him of Clark, a little, the way Jason navigates around Bruce’s silence, the way he doesn’t treat it like a bomb about to go off but just as a fact to work with.

“My mother,” Bruce says, returning his eyes to the road and swerving a little to miss a shredded piece of tire. “I was thinking about my mother.”

“You don’t really talk about her much,” Jason answers, adjusting the flow of one of the A/C vents. Outside around them, June is picking up speed and barreling into the heat of approaching July.

“No,” Bruce says simply. “I don’t. I don’t think I could do her justice.”

“B,” Jason says, with an audible eye-roll, “if there’s anything you can do, it’s justice.”

Bruce doesn’t try to temper the smile that pulls at the corners of his mouth.

“She was good at talking. And listening. I’ve always envied it.”

“Hm,” Jason says.

There’s silence in the Jeep again but it’s no longer tense, just companionable. Or, Bruce thinks it is until the fifth minute when he looks sidelong at Jason and sees the pensive expression. And it’s his turn to manage words, but he finds it easier now. He thinks he’s been getting better, maybe.

“What’s bothering you?”

Jason looks startled at first and then pensive again.

“I dunno,” he says, rubbing his face. “A lot. Shit. A lot I was waiting to talk to you about, but now I don’t know where to fricking start. Surgery. That I hate school. I miss everyone. That the Joker is dead and that you were right and I’ve never apologized.”

“Apologize?” Bruce asks, raising an eyebrow. “What the hell for?”

“I gave you a lot of grief for not killing him,” Jason says quietly. “But it was leaving him alone that kept everyone’s hands clean. It’s kind of a fucking poetic justice, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Bruce says, equally quiet. “But you don’t need to apologize for that, Jay.”

When the silence is tipping into tense again, Bruce takes a deep, long, and measured breath-- the kind he’s gotten practice taking without anyone noticing. It’s a useful skill.

“So, what’s this about school?”

“You know,” Jason says, swallowing hard, “we’ve got like sixteen more hours at least. Can we talk about it later? I’ve feel like this whole summer has just been up and down. I’m tired. I’m so tired. And I just want to sit and be here with you and not feel like we have to talk.”

“Okay,” Bruce says, reaching over and squeezing Jason’s shoulder. “That’s fine. I’ve missed you, too.”

So the Jeep eats up the miles of I-70 and the tension fades and after a while, Jason tips the seat back and dozes while Bruce drives and in the quiet, it feels a lot like being understood.


End file.
